THUNDER BAY – Norman Sponchia is seeking election to Thunder Bay City Council as a Councillor at Large.
Here are his answers to the questions on crime:
Question: Thunder Bay has formed a Crime Prevention Council, how long will it take before that Council meets, and how long afterward to implement its recommendations?
Answer: As a core member of the “Thunder Bay Drug Strategy Committee”, and have been for the last year, I am glad to see that there is now a Crime Prevention Council also set up to find some ways of dealing with people in crisis and to find ways to engage the people in our community who are at risk.
Prevention is the key word here and we have gone on far too long as a society that does not invest in the positive outcomes of our youth. We must understand that a whole community becomes at risk when social issues are not addressed. It’s like infrastructure, if you don’t maintain or replace a bridge you will have a collapse of that bridge that will have a number of whole community consequences. Too long we have left it to the other person to do something about poverty and addictions and lack of housing, hoping someone will take care of it, but it just gets worse. We have a crisis in our community and we have to take care of this and it doesn’t matter how long it will take before these efforts take to be relevant, it is important that we start and one thing for sure these initiatives will be helpful a lot sooner than doing nothing at all.
Question: Over the past year, some on Council along with the Police Services Board have suggested the crime rates are not as bad as they looked.
What is your reaction to Thunder Bay being listed 23rd most dangerous city?
Answer: Crime rates are like rust on your vehicle you are only seeing the surface and any auto body person will tell you that what you see is only a 10th of what you can’t see. We have a problem and it will get worse. We need to engage our youth and we need to help those who are already in a life crisis. We need to offer alternatives that will help people make better or healthier life choices. We must stop, by our lack of concern, pushing people down a negative outcome life path. We need to give people hope and compassion so they can find their own potential and help them cling to their strengths as human beings. It doesn’t matter to me where we are rated as a city what matters is what we are doing to change lives around not statistics. We can change people’s lives and we can change our own lives and we must start by understanding the situation that too many people live in and we need to give them a helping hand for the betterment of all our lives.
Question: The CEDC and Thunder Bay Tourism are working very hard to build our brand as a great place to work, visit and live.
Do you feel that Macleans Magazine’s article can harm those efforts?
Answer: We had image problems in many ways long before Macleans Magazine article. We just don’t want to admit it to ourselves. I get tired sometimes of the mentality our leaders who say that if we just talk positive about things it will make things better, well where has it gotten us as a community. We all want things to be nice, but we actually need to do something to make it that way. Our leaders must not hide behind their walls of dilution but instead find the positive in the work they will do to make all ours citizens lives better and brag then about those accomplishments.
We have so much to offer and we let it slide while we pretend there is nothing much wrong. I understand the idea that we should promote our strengths, and engage in positive discourse pointing at the good things but never at the exclusion or expense of what is wrong and needing our help and our sound purpose of mind and strong compassion of our hearts to resolve. Let us get real cause it is getting very real all around us.
We have the abilities and the heroes in this community to really help us become healthy. Let us support those who are reaching out and those who are reaching up for help and lets all get involved again in our community.
I’m in how about you?
Norman Sponchia
For more information visit www.normansponchia.com