B.C. government appoints former chief justice to review festival safety measures

The Canadian Press

· Posted: May 07, 2025 7:36 PM EDT | Last Updated: 13 minutes ago

The British Columbia government has appointed a erstwhile main justness of the B.C. Supreme Court to study connected information measures for lawsuit organizers and constabulary aft 11 radical were killed erstwhile a operator rammed into a crowded thoroughfare festival in Vancouver. 

Premier David Eby says Christopher Hinkson has agreed to service arsenic commissioner to behaviour the reappraisal "in a precise abbreviated play of time." 

Eby says Hinkson is expected to study backmost by June 30 to assistance usher lawsuit organizers across B.C. to "maximize safety," portion not retreating from the information that radical privation to get unneurotic and celebrate.

The premier says helium knows determination is simply a batch of anxiousness from organizers and those readying to be events this summer, and that they person questions astir security, truthful he's gladsome that Hinkson is consenting to instrumentality connected the job. 

The committee volition survey champion practices for nationalist information astatine assemblage events, particularly around traffic control, deploying trained information personnel, and engaging archetypal responders, according to the commission's presumption of reference.

Event planner Laura Ballance, who has organized thousands of events successful B.C., says the incidental was an unimaginable tragedy, but it's besides important to recognize that attacks specified arsenic the 1 alleged to person happened astatine the Lapu-Lapu Day festival are hard to prevent.

She says information and information person ever been the apical precedence of lawsuit organizers, and information measures besides inhabit a precise ample information of their budgets.