Building a safe community: Front-line workers weigh in on priority issue in Saskatoon civic election

It's Friday morning at Build Up and Aaron Timoshyk just sent today's construction crews to their job sites. His job as program manager got a lot easier when Build Up moved its workshop from a sea can into an actual building.

Inside the workshop, before he heads out to the job sites himself, Timoshyk takes a moment to talk about Saskatoon's civic election.

"We're in unique times," Timoshyk said. "I often hear about common sense solutions and back to basics. These are not common times. We don't need common responses. This requires some creativity and some imagination and we just need people to be courageous."

Mayoral candidates are pitching a range of idea to voters: larger police budgets, a task force, more shelters and fewer shelters. The politicians have had their say. Here's what people working on the front lines want to see from Saskatoon's new city council and mayor.

Now in its fifth year, Build Up is a social enterprise established by Quint, a community economic development organization working in the core neighbourhoods. Build Up offers trades training and employment for people with criminal convictions, often for serious crimes.

"It's kind of a wonderful way to give back for folks who may at some point have harmed the community and are now part of healing it," Timoshyk said.

And it provides one solution to the question of community safety.

"The best way to fight crime is with a job. You give people employment," Timoshyk said.

"You can create community safety through giving folks an opportunity to enjoy some personal prosperity … They can support themselves, their families and their communities because fundamentally we don't believe that crime is a choice, it's an outcome."

Build Up crews work on derelict properties in the core neighbourhoods, renovate Quint's own housing stock, and whatever odd job comes their way. They do everything except electrical and plumbing.

And it's working, according to a case study from The Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan. By giving people jobs and keeping them out of jail, the study found Build Up saves money compared to incarceration and policing costs and prevents crime because participants don't re-offend.

One worker said he's spent his life in and out of jail, but this last year spent with Build Up is the first year-long stretch he hasn't been arrested since his teens. Another worker said Build Up stabilized her life and helped her regain custody of her kids.

Timoshyk said people often ask why they help people with criminal records.

"The reality is that just about everybody who's committed a crime was a victim themselves at some point in their lives, often as a child," Timoshyk said.