Safer city conference a good reminder more work needed

The City of Victoria hosted a full-day conference on Wednesday to reiterate its exceptionally thorough and nuanced Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan originally released in June 2025.

The Spark and Shift conference included speeches from Mayor Marianne Alto, VicPD Police Chief Fiona Wilson and others. Break-out discussions centred around prevention, intervention and response were planned for the afternoon.

“Downtown safety is top of mind for many businesses, so we appreciate the effort that went into today’s conference,” Chamber CEO John Wilson said after the morning portion of the conference. “That said, businesses need to see urgent action that improves downtown immediately — as well as for the long term.”

The Chamber is calling on the provincial government to prioritize public safety in Downtown Victoria in next month’s budget. We’re also partnering on a campaign calling for the federal government to strengthen amendments to Bill C-14 to change how bail conditions are applied to repeat offenders. We want the law to include chronic property crime offenders as well as those who commit violent acts. We believe this will help remove the relatively small number of criminals who are responsible for an outsized number of crimes.

More details will be shared with Chamber members in the weeks ahead.