Regina's mayor talks about the removal of the Pepsi Park encampment

The city of Regina has removed an encampment at Pepsi Park just east of downtown. Police say they arrested five people during the removal this week. Regina's fire chief says the encampment was taken down because it was a safety risk. Some people yesterday were returning to clear out their belongings at the site. According to Jensen, around 50 people at Tuesday's dismantling entered a warming bus where they were offered assistance. Activists say that residents of the encampment should be given more time to prepare. They say that some residents are already on social assistance and that is not enough. To get into this in more detail, you heard Minister Jensen mention the mayor there. We're going to chat with Mayor Chad Wyszynski now about the encampment and other things happening with the city. What supports are being offered right now in your mind to the people that have been moved out of the encampment? Yeah, in terms of supports, again, that is under social services purview and it is accurate. Minister Jensen and I have been talking nearly daily uh for I mean months now I would say um and in terms of supports that's under social services my understanding is um you know it was if there was some sparse shelter spaces available or hotel room stays um that's my understanding what may be available currently um knowing that that's not a long-term solution and so my fear is that as a result of our fire chief making a determination to have to close the encampment, my fear is that this is a very short-term solution to house people, not something that's sustainable long-term and we're going to see people back on the street. What do you want to see then to prevent that from happening? So, as you know, I appreciate that the minister acknowledged what, you know, I had put a proposal back at the end of September, and that's after months of talking about, and not talking, but sharing data. One of the things that I had been very clear with our team is I need the most up-to-date, accurate data daily as to what we have for people, individuals with individual needs on site, that I can share with social services and correlate that to our understanding of what services may or may not be available in our community through organizations and so there our assessment is there is a significant gap between the required services that people need and the uh and the spaces available in our community and so that's been an ongoing conversation that's where uh I ultimately sent the proposal at a high enough level to say we don't own social services we don't own housing we don't own mental health and addictions and we don't own health care we don't have ministries for those we don't have resources for those so that's where I've been challenging the provincial government to take that role on seriously and acknowledge that if we don't have space which our assessment is we don't they need to create that space we can have a safe place for people to go and they can be in that space long enough to get to whatever that next step in the housing continuum is Thank you.