The year is not yet over, and Calgary has already recorded more than 26 homicides, after 20 in 2019. Edmonton has witnessed a 90 per cent spike in assaults with weapons or causing bodily harm. Unbelievably, rather than tackling this escalating violence head-on, officials have joined a utopian crusade against police.
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi both support the “defund the police” movement. They are a reminder of how, mimicking radicals in the United States, Canadian activists have succeeded in taking a once marginal idea to the mainstream.
These days, it seems restating the obvious is not redundant but urgent: defunding the police is a distraction from the real security problems affecting Albertan cities, such as the growth of gangs and rural crimes.