Public safety and emergency services

109 commitments from 11 parties, grouped by who published them.

Vancouver Liberals 25

Work with the Vancouver Police Board to set a strategic plan for its organizational response to intimate partner violence, aiming for a more responsive Intimate Partner Violence Unit and compliance with the Ministry of Attorney General's VAWIR policy guidelines, including thorough investigation of all domestic and intimate partner violence incidents.↗↗↗
Establish an independent board to oversee stable long-term fire funding and transparent deployment reflecting firefighters' first-responder workload.↗↗↗↗↗↗↗
Follow the next phase of the Darkhorse report to grow the fire service gradually, avoiding sudden tax spikes while keeping first responders safe.↗↗
Publish a list of Vancouver's highest seismic-risk buildings, press the Province and federal government to fund their upgrades with tenant protection, and ensure community centres become neighbourhood emergency hubs with backup power and supplies as they are renewed; prepare a recovery plan in advance.↗
Install publicly accessible AEDs in high-frequency public spaces to improve cardiac-arrest response.↗
Fund 15 new VPD financial-crimes officers to investigate proceeds of crime and dismantle the local and international drug economy.↗↗
Close Bitcoin ATMs, unregulated currency exchanges, and predatory lenders used to launder criminal proceeds.↗↗↗↗↗↗↗↗
Stabilize and expand community policing centres.↗
Fill every funded position on the mobile crisis and car teams.↗
Launch a Vancouver Violence Reduction Unit combining police, schools, health, and community and sports groups to reach at-risk youth using a public-health approach.↗
Declare intimate partner violence a public health and public safety crisis, back a victim-survivor-led action plan, and through the Police Board push for a more responsive IPV Unit and thorough investigation of every incident under the provincial VAWIR policy.↗↗↗↗↗↗
Fund rapid graffiti and vandalism cleanup and security grants for small businesses, community organizations, and faith institutions repeatedly targeted by crime or hate.↗
Work with VPD to provide security support to at-risk community groups, including additional officer deployment during religious holidays and cultural events.↗
Extend safe-access protections to include community centres.↗
Through the Vancouver Police Board, push for closer coordination between VPD, RCMP, and CSIS on organized crime, violent extremism, and foreign interference.↗
Scale Peer Assisted Care Teams and Car 87 to real citywide coverage so people in crisis receive mental health care.↗
Develop a Chinatown-specific community safety strategy in partnership with residents, businesses, community organizations, and frontline workers, with clear public reporting on whether conditions are improving.↗
Develop a victim-survivor-led action plan for a stronger municipal response to intimate partner violence.↗↗
Advocate to the provincial government for continued implementation of recommendations from Dr. Kim Stanton's independent systemic review of B.C.'s legal system's treatment of intimate partner and sexual violence.↗↗
Enforce existing bylaws consistently and citywide.↗
Increase VPD funding so that more officers can join the RCMP's Federal Serious Organized Crime unit.↗
Increase local cooperation with Canadian Border Services agents.↗
Advocate to senior levels of government for increases in the Canadian Coast Guard's underwater marine intervention capacity.↗
Tie firefighter staffing levels to city growth through a transparent formula reviewed annually.↗
On day one, initiate the creation of a blue-ribbon task force to address Vancouver's rat problem, including consultation with city officials and rat research organizations, and review of best practices from other cities.↗

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver 24

Work through the Vancouver Police Board to strengthen VPD's chronic-offender capacity, prioritizing individuals responsible for repeated assaults, robberies, and serious street violence, while pressing senior governments for stronger bail, prosecution, and supervision measures.↗↗
Improve coordination between police, city bylaw services, neighbourhood organizations, and local businesses.↗
Establish a Victims Response Standard through the Vancouver Police Board ensuring residents and business owners reporting crime receive respectful treatment, a file number, timely updates, acknowledgement of new evidence, and notice when a case is closed.↗↗
Support School Liaison Officers in partnership with the Vancouver School Board and school communities.↗
Strengthen youth-at-risk, anti-gang, and crime-prevention programs.↗
Adopt a zero-tolerance approach to open drug use in shared public spaces, working through the Vancouver Police Board to prioritize enforcement of existing drug laws while connecting people in crisis to treatment and recovery services.↗
Direct city bylaw enforcement resources toward chronic disorder, obstruction, nuisance, cleanliness, and unsafe behaviour, and work through the Vancouver Police Board to make open drug trafficking, repeat property crime, theft, threats, and intimidation enforcement priorities.↗
Develop transparent public reporting on neighbourhood-level crime and street disorder.↗
Strengthen district and neighbourhood-based policing so officers are more closely connected to the communities they serve, building on Vancouver's existing geographic policing structure.↗
Provide stable support for Community Policing Centres.↗
Expand Block Watch, including greater outreach to apartment buildings and rental communities.↗↗
Enforce by-laws to crack down on public disorder and ensure public parks are accessible, family-friendly, and streets safe for residents.↗
Work with police and the province to prioritize crime prevention, protect residents and businesses from petty crime and vandalism, and enforce laws against public drug use.↗
Improve disaster and emergency resilience by helping neighbourhoods prepare locally and building a disaster-proof emergency command centre.↗
Implement a city-wide program to reduce the rat population.↗
Provide additional mental health support for emergency responders.↗
Support recruiting and provide cultural awareness training for police and other first responders.↗
Review the adequacy of police, fire, and other emergency services to meet current and future needs arising from increasing density and population, with new resources as required.↗
Implement district policing and increase support for community policing initiatives such as Block Watch, school program coordination, youth-at-risk supports, and anti-gang supports.↗
Improve safety and sanitation through more public washrooms and frequent collection of syringes on streets and playgrounds.↗
Improve cleaning of public spaces and address repeat petty crime.↗
Implement a residents' safety action plan, a community-first approach to policing, and a violence-against-women prevention strategy.↗
Implement a public safety and recovery plan focused on repeat offenders, community-first policing, violence against women, a new Victim Response Standard, and a recovery-oriented response to addiction.↗
Establish a Municipal Intimate Partner Violence Task Force, strengthen victim services and risk assessment, expand prevention education, and appoint a City Women's Safety Lead to coordinate action and report publicly on progress.↗

OneCity Vancouver 20

Fund a program to move people off the street rather than cycling them through jail.↗
Establish one coordinated crisis response system in which trained mental health professionals and peer responders answer calls that do not require police, freeing police to focus on organized and major crime.↗↗↗↗↗↗
Conduct an independent, publicly reported organizational review of the VPD to identify investment needs, efficiencies, and calls that could be handled by other responses.↗↗↗↗
Deploy community violence intervention using trusted community messengers, such as CRCL teams, to de-escalate conflict before it escalates.↗↗
Expand restorative justice, building on Vancouver's Downtown Community Court and Indigenous-led community safety models, to reduce reoffending.↗↗↗
Implement ReLight Vancouver to improve lighting on streets, parks, pathways, and bus stops in every neighbourhood, and ban hostile architecture on City-owned benches and shelters.↗↗↗↗
Regulate businesses selling unsafe e-bikes and batteries, and work with the Province on a battery trade-in program, while creating safe operating standards for e-bikes and e-scooters.↗↗
Conduct a structured safety audit prioritising well-lit sightlines, adding mirrors on corners, and eliminating obstructed pathways.↗↗↗↗
Audit lighting coverage specifically in parks, pathways, and streets to ensure all routes home are well-lit and easy to navigate.↗↗
Prohibit 'hostile' architecture on City-owned benches and bus shelters.↗↗
Launch a public monitoring system to identify and fix existing lighting and infrastructure gaps, with accountability for progress.↗↗
Prioritize creating a building risk inventory and conducting seismic retrofits of community centres, and consider upgrading seismic standards for post-disaster infrastructure.↗↗↗
Support community-led restorative justice initiatives, including in partnership with other levels of government.↗
Fund and implement the Four Pillars Drug Strategy (prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and enforcement) through programs including peer support and community intervention, a Crisis Response Systems Review, the Restorative City Framework, and a Housing First framework integrated with community safety and recovery.↗↗
Set air quality and temperature standards for municipal facilities so residents have safe refuges during extreme heat and wildfire smoke events.↗
Implement an aggressive public safety framework using all available tools, centred on housing-first, employment reintegration, community-led crisis response teams, restorative justice, and a four-pillar approach to the drug crisis (expanded voluntary treatment and recovery, public education on substances, harm reduction services where needed, and community-business partnerships).↗
Ensure transparent, accountable, and effective allocation of police department funding.↗
Conduct systematic environmental safety audits to reduce road blind spots.↗
Increase public waste infrastructure to keep streets clean.↗
Ban the use of video-capable smart glasses in pools and public washrooms.↗

Green Party of Vancouver 12

Strengthen public reporting from the Vancouver Police Board through regular updates to Council on budgets, performance, strategic priorities, and community safety outcomes.↗
Establish an Office of Community Safety using an interdepartmental, centralized approach that integrates neighbourhood services including fire, police, licensing, property use, and planning into a proactive systemic approach.↗↗↗
Develop a legally-workable set of City-mandated licence, zoning, and permit conditions to support health and shelter facilities that minimize public substance use and overdose risk, ensure recovery and engagement with health care, and reduce impacts on surrounding communities, with conditions on service delivery, cleanliness, public safety, accountability, and good-neighbour standards.↗
Support an approach that prioritises diversion, outreach, and connection to services before enforcement in managing public spaces, while keeping public spaces safe and accessible for everyone.↗
Invest in crisis intervention and de-escalation programs to help residents, businesses, and communities respond to challenging situations.↗↗
Create a 24/7 non-police, non-medical mobile response team (CROW — Community Response Outreach Workers) to handle non-emergency calls involving people experiencing homelessness, addiction, or other vulnerabilities, accessible to neighbours, businesses, emergency services, and partner agencies via a dedicated service and number.↗↗↗↗
Unlock stalled resourcing for Vancouver's restorative justice programs and embed restorative practices into schools, community organizations, public institutions, and community life.↗↗
Require documentation and transparency around enforcement interactions involving vulnerable residents during the World Cup.↗
Introduce a motion directing City staff to allocate up to $600,000 to restore seasonal lifeguard services at Spanish Banks East and West, Sunset Beach, and Third Beach for the 2026 beach season, in coordination with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, and to report back with implementation timelines.↗
Establish a new 24/7 non-police Community Response Outreach Workers (CROW) team to divert non-emergency calls from police, and create a new Office of Community Safety to coordinate City departments on neighbourhood safety.↗
Introduce a motion to set standards for overdose prevention services to save more lives and provide neighbourhoods with clarity and trust.↗
Conduct independent performance reviews of police spending and outcomes.↗

Vote Vancouver 7

Improve coordination between police, healthcare providers, housing providers, and community organizations so that police are not the only available response to mental health or addiction crises.↗↗
Support Community Policing Centres to ensure they function as neighbourhood hubs for crime prevention, community referrals, youth mentorship, neighbourhood engagement, and resident services.↗
Create an interdisciplinary working group to lead a Restorative Justice Program, backed by stable core funding.↗
Develop a Community Safety and Wellbeing Strategy in collaboration with police, healthcare providers, non-profit organizations, Indigenous organizations, businesses, and community groups to create a framework for serving Vancouver residents.↗↗
Expand existing policies and working groups dedicated to ending gender-based violence in Vancouver.↗
Establish a Restorative Justice System by partnering with Peace of the Circle to train city staff, collaborating with Indigenous communities to create restorative frameworks, and applying The Vancouver Test to all future policies.↗
Rework Community Policing Centres into neighbourhood hubs for crime prevention, community referrals, youth mentorship, neighbourhood engagement, and resident service connections, prioritising prevention, education, and support over criminalization.↗

ABC Vancouver 6

Remove dangerous encampments from parks and public spaces.↗
Continue investing in police and mental health nurses.↗
Ban open-air hard drug use in public spaces.↗
Give police a streamlined tool to seize hard drugs.↗
Mandate provincial drug consumption sites be located away from schools and parks.↗
Put two public-safety plebiscite questions on the October 2026 ballot.↗↗↗

Annette Reilly 5

Create a 24/7 Community Response Outreach Workers (CROW) team.↗
Send trained non-police responders to appropriate mental health, homelessness, and addiction-related calls.↗
Create an Office of Community Safety to better coordinate City services.↗
Improve transparency and accountability around police spending.↗
Improve seismic and emergency preparedness.↗

COPE 5

Support infrastructure to reduce suicide risk, including barriers on bridges and high-risk areas, and programs to intervene and support people in crisis.↗↗
Make Vancouver a Restorative Justice City by endorsing and funding the Restorative City framework.↗↗
Restore the sex worker safety planning position and support front-line services that protect sex workers from violence and exploitation.↗
Expand support for the safety of sex workers, create policy ensuring safe working environments, and include the right to safe exit from the industry.↗
Establish community safety programs to steward protests and community events with public safety captains, without expanding VPD budgets through overtime and overpolicing.↗↗

TrueBlue Vancouver 3

Maintain strong police funding and ensure officers have the staffing, training, and resources needed.↗
Ensure credible allegations of serious police misconduct are independently investigated, while supporting officers who serve lawfully.↗
Support police liaison programs in Vancouver schools to improve safety, build relationships, and respond to violence, gangs, weapons, and serious threats.↗

John Jones 1

Work with the Vancouver Police Board and the VPD to develop an action plan for better enforcement of existing e-bike and e-scooter regulations, addressing unsafe riding and improving accountability.↗

Lucy Maloney 1

Introduce stronger civilian public safety services, including Peer Assisted Care Teams (PACTs), and integrate them into the 911 dispatch system.↗