Mayor Charlie Clark takes on big issues in state of the city address

Generally an opportunity to boast about success of the city, Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark took a different approach at the state of the city address.

Speaking to approximately 300 people from Saskatoon’s business community, the mayor took a different approach than last year and different then previous mayors.

“I believe we need to commit as a community, as a city to support more youth to graduate high school and break the cycle of youth incarceration,” he said.

Speaking to an influential group of people, the mayor called on those in attendance.

“I invite you to go out and build relationships with people who think differently.”

Clark focused on three key elements: infrastructure, the economy and people but according to the mayor, we’re failing at the latter.

Saskatchewan’s youth incarceration rate is twice the national average, according to Statistics Canada.

“We’re spending a lot of money on building and building bigger jails and having more and more emergency services and more and more policing costs.”

Provincial statistics show 43 per cent of the province’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit students graduate from high school compared to the overall graduation rate of 76.5 per cent provincially.

“And then you’re seeing all these young people who have all this potential when they’re born and they start to grow up in the community who end up in the cycle of crime,” Clark said.

A sentiment the chief of the Saskatoon Police Service, Troy Cooper, agrees with.

“Take female offending for an example. We know that a necessary precursor for female offending is poverty so if we just continually try to address some of these issues with traditional enforcement, we’re going to fail all the time,” Cooper said.

The mayor said there will be an announcement in the coming months to address what he says is a broken system.

“This is going to be tough but boy, imagine what will happen if we can turn this around.”