Homeless, the Media and the Mudslinging
Grant Ainsley
Media strategist and trainer. The only media and communications trainer in Canada who offers fully transparent pricing and a money-back guarantee for his group media and communications training workshops.
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.
The issue became the media's lede item as soon as the Edmonton Police Service announced it would be shutting down a number of encampments last month. That set off controversy and some very strange communications from the City of Edmonton.
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.
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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.
Data Entry Specialist at Upwork & Fiverr
9 个月It's definitely tough seeing disjointed efforts when unity is key ??. As Helen Keller once said, "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." Let's hope for stronger collaboration soon to address this pressing issue! ??
Emergency Management, Business Continuity, Security Officer, Construction Safety Officer
10 个月We need to stop immigration immediately & get people into shelters. It’s inhumane to tell people to come here when they do not understand that there are no homes / shelters (not to mention affordable anything). Not only that, but many immigrants didn’t know about the cold. Yes, this is a federal policy & needs to be stopped! The old way of immigration worked well but the JT et al changed it & didn’t prepare, pulled people from other departments, provided $, food, shelter, medical, translation services, etc greater than that of many working citizens. It left our working citizens in competition with those immigrants that were receiving funding from the working citizens. It’s not the immigrants fault, it’s the federal government’s fault & we need to put pressure on all MPs to: - stop immigration immediately until all those who want shelter receive it (yes, some prefer street life; that’s their choice) - use funds that are directed to nonessential services to obtain resources & labour to ensure shelters are built in a fair, effective & value to Canadians manner (not Trudeau et al style) Trudeau said we should open our homes; I say he needs to fill his taxpayer paid homes first & use his own - not taxpayers $ to feed the hungry.
Marketing Lead at NovaDome
10 个月We really want to help over here at NovaDome. And we're located just outside of Edmonton! Our durable, affordable, and rapidly deployable dome shelters seem like a no-brainer to help house the homeless. However, getting through to the right people, that can secure a location and help push the deployment through is proving to be a challenge.
Executive Producer/CEO
10 个月On a personal note, I live about 300 metres from a small encampment in a beautiful park in my Hamilton neighbourhood, a dense suburb up on the Mountain with some stately homes nearby. The encampment has been there since mid-summer. At first, on my morning walks the tenters and I would greet each other, a couple of them had dogs, too. Then, one day, one of the fellows stopped me and told me to be careful as someone tried to poison his dog. It concerned me because my dogs eat whatever they encounter, so from then on I stuck to the path. Now there's a woman living there with severe mental health and probably substance abuse issues who frequently screams at no one in particular. While it's unsettling for me, I can't imagine what it's like for her. So, now I stick to the sidewalk near the road. It's not ideal because I love walking through that park but at least I have a choice to go somewhere else. These poor people do not. The more homelessness finds its way into our neighbourhoods, the more we will be forced to address it. We used to point our finger at homelessness in the US and say, "bad social system! Glad we're in Canada!" Now it's a national disgrace.
Executive Producer/CEO
10 个月I have friends and former colleagues at the City, so I'll be kind... but we both know statements with no names attached to them are weaksauce. However, since the #2 is not spelled out, that statement could not written by any comms person I know. CP style is bloody ingrained in us. The homelessness/housing crisis across this entire country is a complete and utter failure by the federal government. Just ask Olivia Chow. Now, Sohi is trying to take a page out of her playbook, by calling the state of emergency but taking aim at the Province instead of the Feds (?? wonder why?). AB gov could do a good thing here and say, you know what, we have money, we will address this issue somehow. If we can conceive and deploy temporary hospitals for COVID patients, why TF are we not doing something more for these people?? But it's impossible for some politicians to hold back the snark and finger pointing, so here we go...