After a unanimous vote at the March 7 City council meeting, the City of Airdrie will be setting in motion a community stakeholder working group to share both information and strategies to combat bullying in Airdrie.
The motion is a direct response to council’s Nov. 15, 2021 direction for administration to provide options for a locally sourced working group to share and build strategies to help tackle the issue, including input from RCMP, City staff, local school divisions, and social service agencies. That direction was preceded by an Airdrie RCMP town hall last fall that delved into the issue of teenagers gathering to fight at the Bayside 7-11.
At the March 7 meeting, City officials noted how council adopted an anti-bullying bylaw in 2013 to help set the standards for public conduct and provide associated penalties for those who violate it, later amending it to further define ‘bullying’ with specified fines and penalties.
“For this bylaw to be effective, the education and awareness component was needed to complement the bylaw,” said Clay Aragon, manager of community social planning for the City of Airdrie during the meeting.
“Thus, the City created the Airdrie Bullying Prevention Initiative to support the City of Airdrie’s multifaceted approach to addressing bullying.”
The initial approach was multi-pronged in its efforts to combat bullying, involving actions and funding for therapeutic counselling, city-wide education and awareness campaigns, local partnerships, and an anti-bullying fund.
Between 2014 and 2017, Aragon said successful collaborations were made with Community Links and the BGC Airdrie Club to implement community-based, anti-bullying initiatives.
“As an educational program, the initiative did really well and met its outcomes,” he said. “Participants reported increased knowledge and awareness of bullying, which improved their personal skills and competencies.”
Thereafter, an independent consulting firm conducted a study on the City’s effort to stem bullying, concluding they should not invest resources to develop bullying prevention tools and resources, but should instead bring community stakeholder groups together as an inclusive community approach.
City staff recognized the next best step was to begin working with stakeholders to create opportunities for service providers to share program information and network, Aragon told council, including RCMP School Liaisons.
Airdrie RCMP Insp. Lauren Weare said during a recent town hall meeting, members expressed concern with respect to the City’s anti-bullying bylaw and its perceived lack of use by RCMP officers.
“Where it was appropriate, criminal code charges were laid – when it was warranted – so there is a threshold, and we will always default to the specific legislation,” said Weare, adding interest was expressed for RCMP to provide out-of-court alternatives to deal with instances of bullying.
Such alternatives would provide the accused a chance to make amends, take responsibility for actions, and leave the victim with a “sense they have been heard and this is not going to repeat itself.”
Suggestions included modifications of the existing bylaw with built-in diversionary programs to hold parents accountable and make use of Airdrie community groups to facilitate applicable program measures.
“I think you all know intuitively that Airdrie is a very step-up community and they put their hands up,” Weare said. “And one of the things we really want to do was to find programming or support as it relates to bullying within Airdrie.”
Weare said the Airdrie and District Victims Assistance Society (ADVAS), BGC Airdrie Club, Community Links, and the recently created Humble Boxing Academy already have programs developed or have expressed interest in setting up initiatives to help rehabilitate offenders, as an alternative to deal with youth directly.
“These programs already exist in the community, and I think we haven’t tapped into them as we could,” she said. “There is a wide array of opportunities to be able to divert youth [toward].”
In response to the presentation, Deputy Mayor Al Jones said he feels measures should be implemented to hold parents accountable after their children have been accused of bullying, as he said the issue often stems from home.
“I do believe we can teach empathy to the offender but if ultimately, they go back to the same culture of degrading other people and atmosphere, that’s not conducive to that empathy that eventually it might over time lose effect,” he said.
Coun. Tina Petrow said she hoped to see a working group come together as a multi-faceted community-centric approach to combating bullying.
“We can’t fix the problem of adult bullying today, but we can fix adult bullying and criminal code convictions with adults [in the future] if we address youth bullying today,” she said, adding she hopes to see immediate contact made with local groups in this respect.
“We can’t keep having these fragmented approaches to how we deal with these problems in our community – it has to be a community approach.”
Following council’s decision, administration will continue to draft bylaws and/or amendments to combat bullying and to determine the resources needed to implement those amendments at a later meeting.
