Disrupting Safety Narratives For Good

It seems we can never fully let our guard down these days, and I have been really troubled by the $10M taxpayer-funded “Safer Ontario” propaganda campaign from our provincial government. 

This is a very slick campaign that is everywhere right now. TV commercials. Billboards. Full-page newspaper ads.

Some focus on car theft. Many are about clearing encampments from parks. 

Where I live, this giant billboard, pictured below, is directly out front of a federally funded bridge housing site for people who have recently come from encampments. We’re experiencing new levels of government cruelty designed to fuel hatred against our unhoused neighbours. 

I’ve had several people ask me how we should respond, and I think the answer begins by refusing the question we’re being asked. 

The disagreement is not actually about whether safety matters. 
It’s about what creates it.

A Broader Definition of Safety
This campaign is persuasive because it appeals to one of our deepest shared values: safety. 

This type of messaging weaponizes that deeply held value. 

The trick here is not to refute the importance of safety, minimize perceptions of a lack of safety, or suggest the safety of those experiencing homelessness is more important than that of those witnessing it. 

It is to broaden the definition of safety. 

We’ve been asked to choose: 
Do you care about people experiencing homelessness? Or do you care about public safety?

That’s a false choice. 

A better question is: 
What actually creates safety for everyone?

We’re being offered a narrow definition of safety:

• Fewer encampements
• More enforcement
• Larger correctional facilities

Those approaches just change what we see. 

A broader definition of safety includes:

• Stable housing
• Access to health care
• Healthy relationships
• Opportunities for recovery 
• Neighbourhoods where everyone belongs

Our job out here right now, especially as we enter municipal election season in Ontario, is to shift the conversation to a broader definition of safety. 

From "How do we respond to people who make us feel unsafe?" to "How do we design communities where safety is the natural result of how we organize housing, health, relationships, and public space?"

If we define safety narrowly as the absence of visible disorder, we will continue to invest in interventions that move problems around without resolving them. If we define safety as the conditions that allow people and communities to thrive, different solutions come into focus. 

Safe communities are not those that successfully hide poverty or remove visible suffering from public view. Safe communities are those that create the conditions in which people can find stability, recover from crisis, build relationships, and participate fully in community life. 

This summer, one of the ideas I'm trying to disrupt is the idea that safety and compassion compete with one another.

I don't think they do.

I think lasting safety grows from the same things that allow people to live stable, connected, hopeful lives. 

If you take an opportunity to shift a “safety” conversation in the coming weeks, at work, at home, or with friends, let me know. I’d love to hear about it and what worked.