Arm River Constituency 121 Washington Avenue P.O. Box 1077 Davidson, SK SOG 140
Dear Dana,
I am writing today to raise an important issue to your attention. Recently, communities within the Watrous RCMP Detachment attended meetings at the invite of RCMP to hear from our new Sergeant. I attended yesterday’s presentation by the Sergeant and his Commander about their strategies for 2022-2023. We were also reassured that our detachment would remain at a full complement of 4 constables in response to losing a position to the Provincial Emergency Response Team.
Having 4 constables for Watrous is an important piece of having the detachment run properly but still doesn’t address that the RCMP cannot be everywhere at once and with changing times and issues of addictions and property theft facing communities that fall outside of their focus of traffic enforcement and ‘reacting’ to incidents, leave us vulnerable.
With limited resources and a lack of provincial funding to provide additional RCMP Officers, we need to find other solutions. I ask you to look into ways in which the government, in the need of acquiring affordable housing and rental properties may play a role exasperating issues of addiction problems and property crime in communities where enforcement is either completely absent or 30 - 1h30mins away!
Communities without social and economic resources like addiction counselors, employment centres have nothing to provide people dealing with these issues. One possible solution would be to match families and individuals needing assistance to low-income housing and addictions support with communities with these resources.
Communities at 200-800 people are not the best choice for people in need of social assistance. We are resilient and have a bright future but have no capacity to deal people in need of provincial support unless we are given the resources and house them within our communities.
I look forward to hearing from you and working together on this important issue in your constituency.
Sincerely, David Mark, Mayor Town of Nokomis
- Idea’s and opinions expressed here are those of the author
