Mental health funding is safety funding.

On May 26, Calgary City Council will consider Safer Together, the City’s Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan. We strongly support this plan, and we are writing to make sure prevention is at its core. The most effective safety investment Calgary can make is in the upstream mental health care that keeps people from reaching crisis in the first place.

The safest communities are not the ones with the most enforcement. They are the ones where people get help before they are in crisis. Council’s own Mental Health and Addiction Strategy is already built on this idea, with three pillars: Being Well, Getting Help, and Staying Safe. Safer Together is the moment to embed that logic into Calgary’s safety infrastructure for the long term.

WHY WE NEED COUNCIL TO ACT

Three reasons. All three are true.

Because strong, safe communities are the foundation

Community-led organizations across Calgary are quietly holding families and neighbourhoods together. Safer Together is how Council protects and resources that work for the long term, and how we tell those organizations we see them.

Because equity matters and the need is bigger than crime

The City’s own research found that 58% of Calgarians have felt the need for mental health care at some point in their life, and 70% of those needed care within the last 12 months. The vast majority of that need has nothing to do with crime. It is depression, anxiety, addiction, grief, isolation. A safety plan that focuses only on response will miss most of those Calgarians. Mainstream services do not reach every Calgarian equally either: culture, language, trust, and history shape access. Community-led, culturally responsive care closes that gap. Without it, the burden falls hardest on the people already carrying the most.

Because it is fiscally responsible

Mental illness already costs Canada an estimated $50 billion a year. Canadian research finds returns on investment in mental health prevention ranging from $1 to $25 per dollar invested, with the strongest returns in programs for children and adolescents. Police across Canada are also absorbing a rising share of unmet need: Vancouver Police have reported that people with mental health issues account for 21% of all incidents handled by officers, and CPS has built infrastructure around this reality, including the Distress Centre co-location and the Mobile Response Team. Without strong upstream prevention, more of that demand keeps falling on police, not less.

 

 

WHAT WE ARE ASKING COUNCIL TO DO ON MAY 26

Support Safer Together with prevention at its core.

1. Adopt Safer Together as a community safety plan grounded in upstream prevention, not just response.
2. Recognize mental health and addiction supports as core safety infrastructure under the plan, not as a separate or competing priority.
3. Protect community-led, culturally responsive, family-focused care as central priorities within Safer Together, because these are the supports that reach Calgarians mainstream services do not.
4. Bring providers and lived-experience voices to the table as Safer Together is implemented.

How you can help

1. Send a letter to the Council before May 21. Use our sample letter on the next page or write your own. Find your Councillor at calgary.ca/findyourcouncillor.
2. Show up at City Hall on May 26. This is a public gathering and press event, not a rally. If you are part of a faith, cultural, labour, or community group, please wear something that signals where you come from, and bring five people with you. We want people to gather at 9:30 – even if it is for a short time, to show there is community support for this initiative. Please register at CACG’s event page or at: https://www.calgarycommongood.org/stand_with_our_mental_health_team_at_city_hall
3. Forward this to five people. A coalition of voices is what moves a vote.