Edmonton mayor, Alberta justice minister meet to discuss downtown crime
Edmonton mayor, Alberta justice minister meet to discuss downtown crime
Some businesses in Edmonton's Chinatown district only operate with their doors locked all day.
"If you really want to walk in, you have to knock," said Wen Wong, executive director of the Chinatown and Area Business Association.
"We work here. Some members live here. When you walk on 97th Street, our main street, you can tell, almost all stores keep their doors locked."
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi met Tuesday to discuss a spike in violent crime on downtown streets and on public transit.
Last week, Shandro used his ministerial power to demand a report from the city on what is being done to get crime under control. In a letter, Shandro gave a deadline of two weeks for a response and pointed to the recent killings of two men in Chinatown.
Sohi initially called the letter an overreach by the province, but after Tuesday's meeting said he wanted to focus on solutions.
"This is the start of a very good dialogue and we're going to build on it," Sohi said.
"I didn't get the sense that government is against harm reduction. They want to look at all the tools that are available to deal with the addictions crisis, mental-health crisis and homeless crisis."
The Chinatown district has been located in the McCauley neighbourhood, east of downtown, for more than a century.
"In 1912, a streetcar began providing accessible transportation for the many new immigrants and workers moving into the neighbourhood," says a city website.
"Travelling down 97th Street between 105A Avenue and 107 Avenue, you will find Chinatown North, the third-largest Chinatown in Canada," it says. "You will (also) find an abundance of Asian restaurants and shops that sell unique produces, merchandise and traditional Chinese medicine."
But the neighbourhood has been deteriorating over the last 20 years, said Wong, because of "too much social disorder" and has grown more tense during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the last two years, volunteers with Chinatown's Business Improvement Association have been picking up needles when there is no snow. Wong said they collect as many as 300 needles a month in the community, which is just a few blocks from Edmonton's safe injection sites. If more time were put in, hundreds more would be found, he added.
Tents housing the homeless line nearby streets.
"In the last two and a half years, we have more and more homeless population, mentally challenged, (people with) addiction and even sometimes criminals," Wong said.
Police have been called to investigate arsons, including fires that burned a bakery and a restaurant to the ground. Members of the association regularly call Wong to tell him about an assault, he said.
"A customer called my office last Friday. When he paid for his parking, he was attacked with bear spray. He was there for a haircut. Two guys attacked him for no reason."
Wong recalled another time when a restaurant owner and his wife found all the tires on their two cars slashed. Two months ago, a mall in the area had its windows broken at street level.
"The cleanup is huge," Wong said.
"Everybody knows what's happening in Chinatown now. Chinatown is falling apart. This is just a matter of time."
Wong said he is angry.
"I don't believe we have ended up in this (situation) overnight. We have been ignored for the last 10, 20, even more years," he said.
"It's a shame of all levels of government. We have nothing against (the) homeless."
On Monday, Sohi outlined a partial plan to address crime in the city. It includes $1 million to revitalize Chinatown, grants for businesses to upgrade their security, more public washrooms downtown and help for owners doing cleanup in front of their businesses and on private property.
In the long term, the city plans to urge the government to stop releasing health patients and offenders from provincial corrections facilities onto the street. It also wants to create a five-year plan to decentralize social services that are concentrated in Chinatown.
Nearly 40 action items are on the list.
On Tuesday, after announcing an app that will help officers on a call retrieve information about a person, Shandro said he's looking forward to seeing Sohi's plan when he submits it to the government.
The province will wait for the submission before it discusses any contributions it might make to reduce crime in Edmonton's downtown, he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 31, 2022.
Convicted murderer Daniel Jolivet, in prison for the past 30 years, has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested. W5 reviews the evidence he painstakingly assembled while behind bars. W5's documentary 'Buried Evidence' airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV.
The massive white orb drifting across U.S. airspace has triggered a diplomatic maelstrom and is blowing up on social media. A look at what's known about the balloon crossing the U.S. and what isn't.
In the field of cancer treatment, nothing is more important than diagnosing and treating the problem as quickly as possible — but according to new survey data, about one in four Canadian cancer patients report that they are still experiencing cancelled or postponed appointments.
The oldest preserved vertebrate brain has been found in a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish skull that was removed from an English coal mine over a century ago.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said the supply of more advanced U.S. weaponry to Ukraine will only trigger more retaliatory strikes from Russia, up to the extent of Russia's nuclear doctrine.
The suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was found floating over sensitive military sites in the western United States had been tracked by Canada's government since last weekend as it passed through Canadian airspace, sources tell CTV News.
It took 40 years, but former NHL player and coach Ted Nolan is now one of eight Indigenous ex-NHL-ers being honoured hockey trading cards as a part of Upper Deck's First Peoples Rookie Card series.
Indian police have arrested more than 2,000 men in a crackdown on illegal child marriages involving girls under the age of 18 in a northeastern state, officials said Saturday.
The Lethbridge Hurricanes kept Connor Bedard off the scoresheet for the first time in 36 games, but it wasn't enough, as the 'Canes lost 3-2 to the Regina Pats Friday night.
Alberta's high court is being asked to overturn a review board decision relating to the stabbing deaths of five young people at a Calgary house party on the grounds the former provincial justice minister interfered.
After months of driving around the city with an advertisement for a kidney donor on her bright red car, Debbie Onishenko will soon be able to rip off the decals as her search has ended.
Saskatchewan is reacting to the removal of controversial amendment G4 to Bill C-21 by the federal Liberals, which banned certain semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.
With all of the Maritimes still under extreme cold warnings Saturday morning, more than 34,000 households and businesses are without power, as of 11 a.m.
After being charged with speeding by a city-operated photo radar device, a Toronto family was able to successfully fight the charge in court largely due to one small detail.
Torontonians appear to be returning downtown in greater numbers but the pace of the city’s economic recovery still lags behind many other North American cities, a new study suggests.
Residents from Quebec to Newfoundland and Labrador are waking up this morning to more extreme cold weather. Emergency officials warned people to seek shelter and monitor for frostbite if they had to be outside overnight, as the temperature across much of Eastern Canada was expected to feel like -40 C to -50 C with the wind chill.
A Quebec university study found that nearly three years of the pandemic have had an effect on the travel habits of Quebecers: even with the partial or complete lifting of restrictions, they increasingly prefer to travel at home. The most recent Cahier des tendances published by the Transat Chair in Tourism at the École des sciences de la gestion de l'UQAM revealed that inflation and health measures hurt many Quebecers.
Waterloo regional police issued a robbery warning Thursday evening after they said two convenience stores and a restaurant in Kitchener were robbed within a 30 minute span.
Canada's newest millionaire, an 18-year-old university freshman from northern Ontario, has achieved a lot of firsts with a recent lottery win. Here is her story.
An investigation that lasted almost two years has resulted in moose hunting violation convictions for six people and a lodge in Red Lake in northwestern Ontario.
Winnipeg police released a new image of a 31-year-old woman who has been missing since early last year on Friday in the hope it may generate new information on her whereabouts.
A fire destroyed a popular paint and hobby shop in Winkler Thursday afternoon with black smoke prompting Winkler police to close off a stretch of Highway 32 for more than an hour.
The mayors of Port Coquitlam and Port Moody want Nav Canada — the organization that creates flight paths for airports across the country — to pause its plans for a new YVR arrivals route that will direct many large airplanes over their communities.
Seventy-nine-year-old William Herbert thought the woman coming to see him was a nurse who needed to do bloodwork. But instead of helping him, it’s alleged she stole from him.
An emergency room doctor on Vancouver Island is calling on the leadership of the health authority to resign, saying harassment by Island Health officials is prompting doctors to abandon the region amid a critical shortage of health-care workers.
