On Thursday morning, Transition Montréal leader and mayoral candidate Craig Sauve announced the comprehensive plan of his party regarding public safety, which includes: an annual investment of $25 million in community programs and the establishment of a 24/7 civil crisis response unit to address the causes of criminality with human rights-based solutions instead of solely investing in the police reaction, which the current Plante administration has been over-rewarding.
Comprehensive strategy targets crime prevention
The leader of Transition Montréal and mayoral candidate Craig Sauve presented his party’s plan for public safety on Thursday morning, CityNews Montreal reports. The thought behind it is to transform Montreal into a human rights-based, safer, more secure, healthier city, based on the idea of attacking the real causes of criminality, said Sauve.
According to the party, the present Plante government has spent too much on the police response and not enough on prevention. As per Transition Montréal between 2019 and 2023, they also spent an extra envelope of funds of 40 million on overtime every year. Should it be elected as the party is saying that it wants to exercise tight control over overtime to get the much-needed funds that can be used to fund prevention.
Response team to emergencies
The party is also pledging $25 million a year in community programs and the establishment of a 24/7 civil crisis response team to handle non-criminal emergencies (up to 80 per cent of 911 calls) as part of their newly announced public safety plan. This is one of the reasons why Sauve said in a press release that they needed to go beyond the Équipe Mobile de Mediating and Intervening Sociale (EMMIS).
Economic benefits of the prevention approach
It has been demonstrated that every dollar invested in crime prevention is. We will reap savings of likely 4,5 in the future, as we are saving judicial costs, we are saving policing costs, and crimes against society do have a cost in general in our economy, said Sauve, on why Montreal will have to expand and fund more crime prevention programs.
With this new service, Montréal can divert police officers to actual investigations and crimes and provide humane responses tailored to vulnerable individuals, said Sauve. The plan will provide more appropriate solutions to mental health crises and social issues that do not require police action.
Transition Montréal would also like to end random police stops, as it is reported that Black and Indigenous individuals are four times more likely to be stopped, with no difference in the safety of the population. In December 2024, 104 organizations joined their voices to request the abolition of these random police stops.
Changes in policy are motivated by human rights concerns
A demand Transition Montréal claims it will fulfil as soon as it comes into power. It was a weakness of this government not to bring an end to street checks. It is an issue of human rights. A question of human dignity, said Sauve.
In the meantime, the Montreal SPCA is introducing a campaign named An emergency plan for the whole family, which requests the provincial government to involve animals in all levels of disaster planning and response. A poll conducted by Léger showed that eighty-six per cent of Quebecers who own a dog or cat would not leave their home without the pet in the case of a disaster.
The public safety plan of Transition Montréal is a paradigm shift to prevention-focused strategies that deal with the underlying causes of criminality and focus on human rights and community-driven solutions, providing an alternative vision to present policing strategies through greater investment in social programs, crisis response teams, and the end of discriminatory police practices.