Alberta speaks out about Edmonton declaring an emergency | Power Play with Vassy Kapelos

Intro a major deep freeze hitting western Canada right now temperatures in Edmonton Calgary aroundus 36 now the Mayor of Edmonton saying he will declare a homelessness and housing crisis an emergency on Monday comes days after local police finish their removal of eight high-risk homeless encampments if the emergency declaration is approved the mayor plans to invite provincial Federal indigenous officials to meet but the provincial government saying declaring that kind of emergency really has no value and there is no reason for people to be sleeping in encampments in the first place Jason Nixon is Alberta's provincial minister of seniors community and Social Services hey Mr Nixon thanks for taking the time for us today well thanks for having me on what do people need to know about any emergency declaration that may happen well the Edmonton declaring an emergency reality is for the city of Emitt to declare this type of emergency declaration would have no impact it would literally just be a political stunt uh and frankly would have no value to helping tackle the problem it's very frustrating for the provincial government to see the mayor going in this direction rather than continuing to work with the province we've been working working very closely uh with the city at their request particularly with the emitted Police Service but other officials that work directly for the mayor as well as other services within the city of Emon to tackle the unique encampment situation that they're facing in the city of Emon it's very serious uh our province has taken it very very serious and we're going to continue to the other thing I think that's really important it's very important to us as a province is to make very clear that we have adequate emergency shelter space inside all of our largest cities last night our shelters were not full we do not anticipate them to be full tonight uh we have taken significant steps to be able to make sure there's enough space for everybody to stay warm uh and we really want everybody to hear that and it kind of concerns us when some of the messages are going out there is that we do not have enough capacity to deal with the situation we Face we do and we want to make sure everybody is safe warm and wakes up tomorrow I know your ministry is looking at this portfolio very closely you talked about the significant challenges how much of a problem is it Encampments right now you know we we have a in EMT in particular a very big comes encampments encampments are not abnormal they're happening across uh the country but in Emon they have a large amount of encampments and some of the stuff that we've seen come from the emtan Police Service as they've went into some of the encampments over the last several weeks is quite alarming uh we have of course had people die sadly from accidents because of the propane tanks that are inside these situations trying to keep people warm we know there's gang violence taking place inside of these encampments we've seen sexual abuse taking place in the encampments even child trafficking I mean just recently the Emon police came forward with a one of the encampments they went into and a 16-year-old girl was being trafficked sexually within those encampments and so it's very very concerning for us period when it comes to encampments it becomes more concerning when we're dealing with weather here in my hometown of sunry last night about minus 45 and so we want to make sure everybody is safe uh we do not believe Emergency Shelters are long-term solutions to housing but we definitely do not believe that encampments are long-term or safe Solutions question for you funding as you know doesn't make shelter spaces appear overnight is your government prepared to take sign ific action on longer term Solutions and if so what are Funding those well first I want tocl we are putting substantial funding into the emergency Solutions in Emon alone my department spent close to100 million this year making sure we're ready to be able to face this winter and help with the homeless population and we've done similar things across the rest of the province our government though has really focused on long-term Housing Solutions it's it's one of the top priorities for the premier and for me we are currently working through a multi-year process of investing about $9 billion doll into affordable housing units all across our Province that's about 25,000 more affordable housing units on top of the work that we're doing to be able to continue to accelerate our construction processes and make sure that we can continue to make sure that there's affordability across our Market here in the province of Alberta we know that there's a projected $5.5 billion Surplus in the province any sense as to whether your government might be prepared to use a small part of that anyway to try and Homelessness better tackle the issue of homelessness in Alberta I I think that yes and and to to be you know I'm not going to be able to Trump exactly what comes out in the budget here in the next couple months but this remains one of the highest priorities for me and my department uh to be able to make sure that we can continue to provide adequate housing for all albertans and I think if you saw the previous budget where we've seen unprecedented record amounts of Investments by the conservative government in housing from everything from homelessness to seniors and everywhere in between I think that really shows clearly where we're headed uh and we continue to want to work that way and again we'll keep calling on the mayor of emont uh to come to the table to work with us on long-term Solutions like that not political stunts we want to work together we want to fix things and we want to continue to make sure we have the best province in this country to live in uh but we don't want to waste time with political stunts we want to really fix things for vulnerable people just before we go you say political stunts so what would your message be to the Mayor of Edmonton you know we've been asking uh to come in and have a briefing about the work that his home officials in the city of Edmonton has done uh with the uh the province they've asked us for help when it comes to this encampment issue in the emergency shelter context we really strong encourage the mayor to take us up on that opportunity and I I also want to be clear as I have been to the rest of City Council in emont if the mayor does not want to make sure that briefing takes place for Council before they have make decisions about any Declaration of emergency I will make sure that the province will make uh available to them a briefing if that's what they would like Jason Nixon joining us from Alberta he is the province's minister responsible for not only social services but also senior community and the issue of homelessness Falls in his portfolio thanks for this and uh stay warm of course Wherever You Are you bet thanks for having me on