Dozens of elected officials and members of Prince George’s business community gathered downtown to discuss crime and safety issues in the late afternoon and evening of Thursday, Sept. 4.
More than sixty people spent two hours in a ballroom at the Ramada.
The event was hosted by the three Prince George Conservative MLAs, Rosalyn Bird (Prince George-Valemount), Sheldon Clare (Prince George-North Cariboo) and Kiel Giddens (Prince George-Mackenzie), as well two of their colleagues from out of town, public safety critic Elenore Sturko (Surrey-Cloverdale) and jobs critic Gavin Dew (Kelowna-Mission).
After Prince George city council voiced a desire to participate in the forum earlier in the summer, Mayor Simon Yu and councillors Susan Scott, Kyle Sampson, Tim Bennett and Trudy Klassen represented the municipal government at the event.
Attending on behalf of city administration was director of administrative services Eric Depenau.
Before the forum, Clare, Giddens, Sturko and Dew were led on a walking tour of the downtown core by Downtown Prince George executive director Chrisie Berry, president Eoin Foley, treasurer Derek Dougherty and Prince George Chamber of Commerce executive director Neil Godbout, The Citizen’s former editor.
As the group walked along, the locals pointed out incidents like fire, vandalism and even explosions that had occurred at various properties.
Going by the former Fortis BC call centre on Second Avenue, Foley said the staff moving to a new location in the Spruceland area due to crime and safety concerns means dozens of people who won’t frequent downtown businesses as often.
Passing the St. Vincent de Paul building on the same road someone lying on the sidewalk threw an object in front of the group and onto the street. Sturko said it was a hypodermic needle.
Starting the evening off, Clare said everyone knows there’s a problem with crime and it’s time to find solutions. He said that getting primary source data at events like these was important for he and his colleagues to take back to Victoria when the legislature comes back for its next session.
Clare said they would be hosting further events in Quesnel in Williams Lake.
Yu made a few remarks thanking those present for sharing their remarks and said that as a downtown business owner, he’s experienced some of same issues as those present.
Giddens said that many issues were discussed during his time as both president of the chamber of commerce and a member of the previous iteration of the city’s public safety committee.
While those problems still persist, he said that there’s only so much the city itself can do.
Sturko said while she was happy to visit Prince George, she was sorry that street disorder was the reason for her trip. She said during the downtown walk, she saw some underlying causes of that disorder like untreated mental health and addictions.
Unlike in the Lower Mainland, Sturko said there aren’t as many places for people to get treatment for those issues. Discussing what she saw in her former career as a police officer, she said she got into politics to try to find frontline solutions to some of the problems she saw in the RCMP.
Prince George, she said, helped affect change in Victoria after the Prince George RCMP announced that drugs obtained through safe supply programs were ending up in the wrong hands, forcing the government to alter its policies.
Dew said he was inspired to enter politics because of his experiences as a small business owner. He said BC is at a crossroads, where it’s getting harder and harder for businesses to operate and thrive.
What really scares him, he said, is a decrease in the number of new businesses opening in recent years and an increase in the number of bankruptcies. This, he said, is leading to an erosion in many communities’ downtown cores and job opportunities for young people.
After those initial comments, Bird carried a microphone around the room and gave attendees chances to talk about the challenges they’re facing both crime-related and otherwise.
A woman who introduced herself as the manager of the downtown Canada Post building talked about repeated issues with vandalism and theft that have occurred, including multiple incidents involving the same person.
She said she doesn’t feel safe walking downtown to the point where she was debating whether she should walk or drive to the forum.
Sturko said there are issues with the Criminal Code of Canada and the court system where there are incentives within the system for people to be released from custody as soon as possible. She said that the principle of restraint under 493 of the criminal code needed to be amended to help deal with catch-and-release issues.
Because people aren’t being held accountable for their crimes, she said, it’s emboldening criminals.
At the provincial level, Sturko said, there’s a serious lack of resources for mental health assessments and treatments.
Another member of the public who didn’t introduce himself said there are a lot of non-profit organizations who are encouraging anti-social behaviour like drug use and aren’t holding themselves accountable to the communities they live in.
Sturko said she doesn’t want to imprison everyone with addiction issues, but wondered if there should be way to compel people to get treatment.
A man named Roy Stewart, who said he’s a lawyer with an office across the street from the courthouse, says he hears screaming from the street every day. He cited the explosion of the former Achillion restaurant, saying he doesn’t think there’s a similar event that has occurred across the entire province.
He criticized BC’s NDP government for not bringing more treatment beds to Prince George since the last provincial election and the federal government for not doing enough work on bail reform.
He said the solution has to be political as the police have enough on their hands.
“Goddamn it, we don’t want to take it anymore,” he said. “We want politicians who form government to do the right goddamn thing.”
To this point, Dew said, the provincial government has only introduced inadequate band-aid solutions. He cited a vandalism rebate program launched by the NDP that had onerous conditions and that handed out only about one-fifth of the money set aside for it.
Keg Restaurant owner Jos Van Hage talked about a decline in business in recent years and said that Prince George’s problems are currently like what Amsterdam in his native Holland was like 50 years ago.
What changed in Holland, he said, is that the people went to the government and said enough was enough, demanding a solution.
During last year’s provincial election campaign, Giddens said, street disorder, crime, mental health and addictions were by far topics he heard people talk about most when knocking on doors.
A representative of a downtown daycare said their primary goal is safety for the 108 spaces for kids they have and said they’ve had to call 911 more than 10 times since they opened last October, including about active drug use in kids’ line of sight and indecent exposure.
Every week, she said, she has to clean up items like human feces, drug paraphernalia, and discarded underwear. She added that she thinks downtown is missing safe outdoor green space for children to use.
She said there have been several near misses where the building has almost had to be evacuated due to fires being started near their building.
Sturko said that despite the supposed rollback of the decriminalization of public drug use, the fact that these cases aren’t being prosecuted means the users have defacto permission to continue. She said the province needs to take responsibility and take action.
Dew said his family used to run a child-care business and has experienced some of the challenges to establish a business in that sector. He said the government needs to prioritize the success of those kinds of businesses rather than allow the chaos on the streets to continue.
BC Schizophrenia Society of Prince George executive director Nansi Long said her agency is doing the best it can, but agencies like hers aren’t being given the resources they need by government to do their work despite providing deliverables year after year.
A woman named Alicia who works for Mills, an office supply company with a on First Avenue near Moccasin Flats, said that around a year ago an intoxicated man came into their building through the rear and died of an overdose in their warehouse.
She then had to wait until 10:30 p.m. for the coroner to pick up his body and spoke about the guilt she felt for not helping him after he had attacked her.
She spoke of the impact that incident had on her and that similar incidents have had on businesses in the area, who have had to put up fencing around their properties.
In response, Dew said there haven’t been enough conversations about the trauma that people in communities’ central business districts have had to witness or endure.
Former Prince George-Mackenzie BC Liberal MLA Pat Bell, the owner of the downtown Wendy’s location, spoke about the conversation of the former North Star Inn into a supportive housing facility. He said he was worried that it would spell the end of his business, but it didn’t change things either for the better or worse.
He said in the last year, there have been around 11 windows smashed at the Wendy’s, but he’d prefer that the people feeding drugs into Prince George be dealt with rather than the vandals.
While he’d like to blame Premier David Eby and the NDP, Bell said the federal government needs to give the RCMP the tools to deal with situations like this.
Sturko said that she agrees that the root causes need to be addressed, but individuals need to be held accountable for their actions. She said that treating people for addictions is a more successful route to reducing the demand for drugs rather than just going after traffickers.
She then said that Eby and the NDP have been the biggest drug kingpins in BC, referring to a bust outside a downtown pharmacy that she said was related to the province’s safe supply program.
John Zukowski, a member of the city’s Standing Committee on Public Safety and a downtown business owner, said small businesses are the lifeblood of their communities but many of them are barely able to make ends meet when they have to pay $2,000 to repair broken windows and deal with human waste and graffiti.
He said he was tired of seeing elected officials wearing blinders and ignoring things they don’t like, expressing gratitude to the MLAs for hosting the forum.
Concluding the structured part of the event, Bird took the microphone to thank members of the business community for coming out and sharing their stories despite being tired and frustrated.
At her drug takeback event the previous week, Bird said just one table collected 12 pounds of medications. She said by continuing that effort each year, they could take thousands of pills off the streets.
Bird said that the local business advocacy organizations and the RCMP need to hear about incidents when they happen so that she and her colleagues can use that information to push for change in Victoria.
For the last half-hour of the event, the MLAs had one-on-one conversations with those present at the event.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Sturko said she’d heard similar stories from business owners at similar events held around the province — rampant public drug use, untreated mental illness, poverty and homelessness.
While amending the criminal code and bail reform is a federal responsibility, she said BC has a responsibility for the administration of justice, which includes making sure that enough courts are open and there are enough prosecutors and resources to deal with cases referred to Crown counsel.
Heading into the next legislative session, she said she would bring up the issues raised at the Prince George forum with government during question period.
