Wellness Within demands immediate removal of HRP from Superstore locations

Wellness Within is deeply troubled by recent reports of armed Halifax Regional Police officers patrolling Superstore locations across the city. The outsourcing of publicly funded policing resources to private, for-profit corporations is misguided, dangerous and unnecessary.  Wellness Within demands the immediate removal of armed officers from local grocery stores and demands transparency from HRP on their extra-duty programs. 

The addition of armed officers is an act of intimidation that comes as the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased food costs, food insecurity, and police presence, causing additional risk and stress for women, trans, nonbinary and racialized Nova Scotians. 

In 2019, Nova Scotia had the highest share of severe food insecurity at 4.6 percent of persons. This was higher than the national average of 3.2 percent of persons experiencing severe food insecurity.

Policing in Canada is founded on colonialism and is characterized by racism, misogyny and homophobia/transphobia. Since 2020, there has been a significant increase of police presence nationally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Halifax in 2020, Santina Rao was violently arrested in front of her children at a local Walmart store. In response to her arrest, Wellness Within released demands for gender sensitivity in arrests. Grocery shopping is itself a gendered activity, with women therefore more likely than men to face police intimidation. 

As noted in January 2022, Wellness Within welcomes and fully endorses the recently released report Defunding the Police: Defining the Way Forward for HRM, prepared by the Board of the Police Commissioner’s Subcommittee to Define Defunding Police. We urge the Halifax Regional Municipality council to adopt all recommendations put forward in this report.

Wellness Within is a volunteer-based registered non-profit organization that serves women, transgender and nonbinary people who have experienced criminalization and are pregnant or have young children in Nova Scotia, part of the unceded and unsurrendered ancestral territory of the Mi'kmaq people. 

Wellness Within supports people through the full spectrum of reproductive health experience; facilitates workshops and education sessions; develops resource materials; and advocates for reproductive justice issues.

Media contact: Martha Paynter, Chair, 9022927082, martha.paynter@gmail.com