Homeless, the Media and the Mudslinging

---

There's been more written and talked about on the homeless crisis in the Edmonton media in the last month than the last five years.

That was followed by the almost predictable mudslinging between Edmonton and the provincial government, as temperatures plunged to the mid minus 30's. It was a bizarre week.

Don't Quote Me on This

The curious series of events started last Tuesday, when a statement on the homeless issue was released by the City of Edmonton.

I first saw it from journalist Sean Amato on Twitter, who reported the City asked that this statement not be attributed to anyone in particular.

Let me get this right. The City releases a statement and asks for it not be attributed to anyone, even though it contains quotation marks? That’s crazy. That's not how PR works.

Quotation marks mean you are quoting somebody or something. Somebody must be making that statement. Who?

A prominent Edmonton lawyer sent me a private message suggesting it was probably taken from a sworn affidavit. That could be because of the ongoing court case on homeless encampments.

To me, it looked like something that would be written, or approved by a lawyer. If it was from the City Solicitor Section of the City of Edmonton, then the department should be quoted.

Amato then asked a better question. Where were the Mayor and Council? Why wasn’t the Mayor or members of City Council talking about whether they were okay with police cleaning up a number of encampments, despite the protests of those living in them and advocacy groups?

That turned out to be the question of the week.

"High Risk"

You notice I didn’t call them “high risk encampments” as many media members did last week.

I found that term misleading. Edmonton Police Service said the eight encampments that needed to be shut down were high risk. That doesn’t mean they were. In the opinion of police they were high risk, but that automatically doesn’t make them high risk encampments.

The best way to refer to them would be “Eight encampments, classified as being high risk by city police,” or something to that effect.

I noticed as the week went on the Edmonton Journal was putting the words “high risk” in quotation marks.

I’m also not blaming police for doing what they did. They had a difficult job to do, one that many people wanted done months ago. That’s not my point.

Hawaiian Holiday

Back to the question of why the Mayor and Council were so quiet, even though the dismantling of the camps was front page news for several days. Everyone wondered, what this what you wanted?

Last Thursday, Mayor Amarjeet Sohi called for a special meeting of Council to be held today and said he’ll introduce a motion to declare “a housing and homeless emergency”. He also did a blog post, but never met with the media.

The same day, Councillor Anne Stevenson did meet with the media. All eight encampments were in her ward. She released a statement and carefully suggested tearing down the tents might not be in line with the City’s stance on reconciliation. Sohi said much the same thing in his statement.

Okay, but what about what the police did when the encampments were shut down? Why didn't anyone from Council speak up then? Why now and why was it done in such a soft way? It was like everyone was walking about on eggshells.

Then on Friday, things took a nasty turn when Social Services Minister Jason Nixon entered the chat. He said declaring the homeless issue an emergency would solve nothing and it was just a political stunt. He also slipped in the news that Mayor Sohi was away in Hawaii at the time.

Interesting. A low blow, but interesting. Remember when COVID cases were going through the roof right after former Premier Jason Kenney talked about the Best Summer Ever? He was on holidays for the month of August as cases soared, but made no comment on the situation. Neither did anyone else. He never recovered politically.

Within hours of Nixon’s comment on Friday Sohi held a news conference, but wouldn’t say if he was in Hawaii last week, or when he got back. He proceeded to point the finger at the province for not doing enough.

We enter a week with frigid temperatures and political leaders fighting over who should be doing what to solve the problem. I don’t know what the answers are, but I do know it seems like we’re farther away from them than ever before.

The way it played out in the media last week was bizarre.

Photo credit: CityNews