Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce Community Safety Panel timely after a spate of stabbings

Known for its picturesque landscapes and coveted liveability, Victoria is facing a reckoning with what is feeling to some, like an alarming surge in levels of street violence downtown. On Monday, VicPD officers responded to a stabbing in the 600 block of Yates Street—the seventh stabbing since March 1. The April 15 incident underscores a troubling spate of violence in the city, with concerns heightened by knifings on April 1 and April 9 which both resulted in deaths.

Tuesday’s panel on community security, brought together by the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce for its AGM, was timely. The panel included Jonny Morris, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association BC (CMHA), Carolina Ibarra, CEO of the Pacifica Housing Advisory Association, and Victoria police Chief Del Manak.

The recent violence put the spotlight on ongoing issues of gaps in supportive housing, addiction, mental health, and crime. “The issues of public safety concern so many public sectors,” Chamber CEO Bruce Williams said in his introductory remarks.

"We need to understand the many moving parts of incidents like this.”

Victoria Coun. Jeremy Caradonna said he’s receiving complaints daily about the state of downtown from residents, business owners, and tourists.

As for the impact on Victoria’s reputation and bread-and-butter tourism industry, Mayor Marianne Alto who took in the panel, told the media afterward: "Is this serious and a concern? Of course, it is. Is it terribly different than other years? Unfortunately, not. Will we want to change that narrative in future years? Absolutely."

On Monday, VicPD released a table representing assaults with a knife for each quarter of the last five years which doesn’t show an upward trend.

VicPD Graphic

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While Manak could not reveal ongoing investigation details of the incidents because the cases remain open, the chief wanted to add some context to them. “It’s not a numbers game. When you see the frequency of the violence. I can’t tell you without any confidence it’s OK,” he said. “It’s concerning.”

“It makes sense that we’re concerned,” said Pacifica’s Ibarra. “There is an illegal drug trade [in Victoria] and we can’t sugar coat that and when people’s basic needs aren’t being met, there are criminal organizations that will take advantage.” We need to make sure people’s basic needs are met and the most vulnerable people need to be protected,” she said.

Should involuntary care be part of the answer?

The hot potato question of the day was whether involuntary care or detention should be on the table. The CMHA’s Morris was clear: “There aren’t enough hospital beds in the province for us to detain ourselves out of this.” At the same time, he pointed to Mental Health Act (MHA) legislation the province enacted in the 1990s that is dated and needs massive update and reform. “Involuntary care is a canary in the coal mine because we’re not getting to people soon enough. You can apply the same logic of cancer care to mental illness. We’re getting to people at Stage 4 of a crisis,” rather than earlier stages, Morris said.

“We want to ensure the right care for the right person, at the right time.”

For Ibarra, housing is “the cornerstone of community safety.” She also emphasized the need to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness: “Just because someone is unhoused does not mean they are contributing to lack of safety in the environment.”

Manak emphasized that when it comes to responding to people experiencing a mental-health crisis “where there is violence, threats of violence, weapons and criminality present, the only response is the police.”

Morris told the group Peer Assisted Care Teams (PACT) are keeping people safe, helping to avoid calling the police to come out on calls and having people go to the ER. We’re very supportive of AVI’s efforts to increase community-based care,” he said.

One thing is clear, the panel said: it has to be a united effort

No one is operating in a silo when it comes to addressing the unhoused and the recent violence, the panel said.

“Without collaboration, said Ibarra “we will get nowhere and that includes all levels of government, other agencies, police, mental-health and addiction specialists, pharmacists.”

For her efforts in that domain, Morris praised Alto, the Victoria mayor, who recently convened a community safety meeting where people were “really thinking about the voice of business and the citizens who live here and the role of recreational parks and gathering spaces.”

Miller also acknowledged the work being done on the ground by members of the panel and their stakeholder partners as being “intensely local.”

Caradonna said the intensity of the support required to address these complex and overlapping local challenges requires provincial funding.

“Give us the money,” Manak said. “We know best how to allocate it and we will improve housing and response to mental health and policing because who else is going to know what the local needs are—but there continues to be downloading and silos we continue to work in.”

‍ Situation Tables empower agencies to reduce risks that can impact a person’s safety

To that same end, the VPD chief revealed “We’re trying to get a situation table up and running, and what that really is is bringing all of the partners together, including the agencies we're representing to deal with individuals who are acutely at high risk for hospital visits or police. They’re unstable and causing the greatest harm. We need to be nimble and come together and come up with a plan quickly.”

Unfortunately, he said, “The situation table gets bogged down by information sharing agreements and privacy impact assessment agreements.”

Following the AGM, Alto pointed to the council’s emergent community safety plan. “We're aiming for September, we'll be able to present to council a whole series of recommendations, which we believe will substantially and quite profoundly, actually change the way the city delivers services and its policies around community safety and well-being that will include not just what we can do, but advice to other orders of government and service providers and other partners.”

In a recent update on the violence, Vic PD reminded the public that “Each day, tens of thousands of people safely live, work, play and visit in Victoria, and our citizens and visitors should continue to feel safe in going about their day-to-day lives.”