REGINA — Public safety will be a key focus of the new legislative session in a number of different aspects.
Much of the attention going into the new term has been on the Compassionate Intervention Act legislation in which certain individuals suffering from addictions would be compelled into treatment.
“It's an exciting development, but it's just a continuation of more of the work and the investments that we've been putting into creating safer communities,” said the province’s Corrections, Policing and Public Safety Minister Tim McLeod.
He noted there is more to what the province is doing.
“We know that there's two sides to that equation. We need to provide a path through recovery for people who are battling addiction, and we need to make sure that we're holding those who are making profit off of exploiting those individuals accountable for their crimes. And so the compassionate intervention piece is certainly one that we're putting on the side to support individuals who are battling addiction.”
There is more to the government’s plans than just compassionate intervention, which was widely speculated about. McLeod also confirmed the Response to Illicit Drugs Act is going to be introduced this fall.
McLeod said it is “speaking to the half of the equation about holding those accountable who are exploiting vulnerable individuals who are taking advantage of people who may be battling addiction. So the Response to Illicit Drugs Act is going to introduce measures on the accountability side, making sure that enforcement is there for people who would exploit those who are vulnerable, making it a harder path for those who may think that they can traffic drugs and create that sort of danger in our community. We're going to introduce measures to hold them further accountable.”
McLeod told reporters Wednesday that “you're going to have to wait until the act comes out to see the specifics.” But he did say what you will see with that legislation are “tools that help police and law enforcement hold greater accountability against those who can traffic and drugs and those who may be exploiting vulnerable individuals.”
McLeod also pointed to several pieces of legislation that have already been introduced, including Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods legislation, the Street Weapons legislation that came in this summer to help those communities who choose to adopt in to give police the power to remove dangerous items from their communities, and investments in additional municipal police officers, RCMP officers, and SCAN officers — “more boots on the ground and more tools for those officers to have, helping them create safer communities,” he said.
Amendments coming to ensure appropriate compensation for firearms buybacks
McLeod was also asked about the province’s plans in response to the federal gun buyback program.
McLeod said they already have in place the Saskatchewan Firearms Act provincially, but what they are going to introduce in the Legislature are amendments to “ensure that if the federal government are going to continue down this path, we will take every measure possible to make sure that we're protecting the rights of individuals who are law-abiding firearms owners, protecting their property and making sure that if that property becomes devalued, that they're being appropriately compensated.”
Saskatchewan Chief Firearms Officer Robert Freberg said with this new legislation, “what we're doing is we're putting more specific requirements in place with respect to the federal government for compensation, with respect to the proper compensation evaluation of people's property.”
“I want to make it clear, again, we are in no way supporting the seizure of people's property of firearms,” Freberg said. “We don't see this having any advantage in bringing any public safety enhancements to the province, but at the same time, people are going to lose these firearms, which is, again, that handgun badge, that royalty badge. There's a lot of firearms that are affected in Saskatchewan. We want to make sure that people are being properly compensated.”
Freberg added that it is also a public safety matter, because “if people don't feel that they're being properly compensated, they're going to have a very large amount of compliance. So obviously we feel that having decent, fair and reasonable compensation would help drive some compliance around that, even though we oppose the concept of seizure of firearms.”
As for proper compensation, McLeod emphasized that if the federal government are choosing to make firearms that were previously legal illegal, it will be on them to fairly compensate. “It's their responsibility to properly and fairly compensate individuals whose personal property may have been devalued.”
