Victoria passes 1st hurdle to approve community safety and well-being plan

Maryse Zeidler · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 19, 2025 8:02 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

City councillors successful Victoria person voted to endorse a 79-page program that aims to code issues astir nationalist upset and a "diminished consciousness of assemblage information and well-being." 

"[This plan] volition acceptable america disconnected connected a people of enactment that I judge volition alteration the acquisition of surviving successful Victoria," Mayor Marianne Alto said astatine Monday's committee of the full meeting. 

"This is simply a profoundly analyzable and broad strategy change."

Alto said voting connected the program was a "watershed moment" for councillors, adding that residents had intelligibly expressed their concerns astir societal disorder. 

The program volition request to beryllium addressed astatine a regular assembly gathering for last approval.  

Dozens of recommendations

Staff began to make the program successful 2023 arsenic portion of the city's 2023-2026 strategical plan, nether absorption from council. The study said it was a effect of 18 months of nationalist engagement, information mining, statement and discussion. 

The program includes much than 100 recommendations nether 8 main categories: 

• Housing.
• Health care.
• Service delivery.
• Downtown.
• Residents.
• Commerce.
• Policing and justice.
• City's assemblage information and well-being services.

Recommendations see creating much lodging for radical who are homeless, attracting much household doctors and piloting a cosmopolitan basal income system. 

Other motions related to the program include directing metropolis unit to measure and place the plan's fund implications and required argumentation changes, and directing the politician to prosecute with metropolis partners and different levels of authorities connected the plan's components. 

Those motions besides passed. 

Concerns astir 'aspirational' scope

The program comes connected the heels of a report from the Downtown Victoria Business Association that claimed hundreds of concern owners would see leaving the city's halfway if they weren't tied to their lease owed successful ample portion to issues with transgression and societal upset related to drugs and intelligence health-related issues. 

In their remarks anterior to voting connected the metropolis plan, respective councillors noted that galore of the recommendations autumn extracurricular the scope of the municipality's jurisdiction. 

Speaking with On The Island big Gregor Craigie earlier this week, Coun. Stephen Hammond said helium mostly endorsed the program but was disquieted astir the expectations it mightiness acceptable for residents. 

"The trouble is that radical are expecting america to bash things successful which the state and the feds person the quality to walk and spell into indebtedness for," Hammond said, referring to issues similar housing, intelligence wellness and recruiting household physicians.

"There's tons of bully things that are aspirational. And past it's conscionable a substance of, tin we get the state and the national authorities to spell along?"

Coun. Marg Gardiner, who voted against the question to endorse the plan, specifically expressed concerns astir the effects of cause and wellness policies from Island Health and the province

"They are worse than a hurdle. They could scuttle the full [plan]," Gardiner said astatine the meeting. 

"There is simply a misunderstanding of the basal origin of upset connected our street. The basal origin is cause addiction and the nonaccomplishment to supply rehabilitation."

Gardiner said she didn't privation to springiness mendacious anticipation that the metropolis and the information program would resoluteness those cardinal issues. 

At the meeting, Alto acknowledged those concerns. 

She said what she and galore municipal leaders crossed B.C. person said repeatedly — that the work of galore of the problems plaguing parts of Victoria lies with higher levels of government.

Alto said the metropolis intends to proceed moving with the state and the national authorities connected those issues, but it is clip to acceptable a precedent. 

"We cannot hold immoderate longer, we person a work to Victorians to instrumentality action." 

No speedy fix

Sandra Severs, president of the Downtown Victoria Residents Association and a subordinate of the 10-person assemblage leaders sheet that helped signifier the plan, said the recommendations whitethorn beryllium lofty but they supply a roadmap to enactment from. 

"The solution to galore of the problems that we're facing successful the metropolis are not elemental problems to solve," she told All Point West impermanent big Liz McArthur. 

"I would defy the thought of the speedy fix."

Severs said information isn't conscionable astir transgression and societal upset — it's besides astir things similar entree to a household doc and a explanation of what it means to consciousness harmless successful the spot wherever radical live. 

Victoria's information and wellness program serves arsenic an accidental to connection solutions, Severs said, alternatively of conscionable reacting to problems, and to supply enactment for different municipalities dealing with akin issues.