Overall approach failing, Downtown PG President tells Public Safety Committee

Prince George’s Standing Committee on Public Safety held their October meeting at City Hall yesterday. (Tuesday)

The meeting started with an update from Councillor Kyle Sampson, who does not sit on the Public Safety committee, but sits on the Intergovernmental Affairs committee, outlining how City Council advocates to the other levels of government.

Sampson noted the City’s strategy is to go down more frequently to Victoria to meet with Ministers while having City staff staying in frequent contact with the Ministries, which he said puts them in front of government more often.

“It’s always trying to find that right balance of tone on are we holding government accountable, and are we being productive with our asks?,” Sampson explained.

“Do we go in there and beat them with a stick, or do we very clear on our issues, but look for collaboration?”

Sampson noted they’ve had successes with being more collaborative.

“Housing is one of our areas that the province has held us up on what we can do, close the encampment, for example,” he explained.

“We needed more housing, rather than saying, “rah rah rah, you’re not good, build more housing,” we said, “you’re not doing a good enough job, we need more housing, what does it take from us to get you to do your job.””

Sampson said this led to a collaboration that led to the housing being built.

Councillor Brian Skakun, chairing the meeting in the absence of Mayor Simon Yu, also noted they met with 11 or 12 meetings with Ministers at UBCM, and the letter from CrossRoads owner Daryl Leiski was presented to Premier David Eby at one of those meetings.

Skakun also mentioned last week’s Safe Streets Rally that took place at the CN Centre.

“From my perspective after having attended that rally [last week], most people that attended that rally would think City Council’s not doing nothing,” he said.

Skakun added most of the work being done is happening behind the scenes that most wouldn’t see.

“If we’re going to get pounded for not doing anything, then I think we have the responsibility to say something,” he said.

Skakun also suggested to organizations like the Chamber of Commerce or Downtown PG could join the City at the UBCM convention as a non-voting delegate.

“I think our relationship has been a bit strained, and there’s a lot of frustration, but we need your support, especially when we go to Victoria, we’re going to go to Victoria next year, we’re going to go to Ottawa, to help convince, these senior levels of government we can’t do it alone,” he said, adding he understands the frustration.

Before moving onto the agenda, Downtown Prince George and Nancy O’s Owner Eoin Foley asked for the opportunity to speak.

“Granted the City has put some significant effort into some wins, especially on the housing front and the encampment, kudos to you on that,” Foley said.

“The reality is, the overall picture, we’re still failing, all the approaches that we’re making, as a community, not just City Council, ourselves, MLAs, MPs, everything, when you add it all up, it’s still failing, it’s still failing the community.”

Foley said buildings are burning down and fires are happening every night.

“You guys know this because you ran a pilot program, over ten nights you found 58 fires, you know this, it’s on a report that you created,” he said,

Two weeks ago, Foley found piles of ash at both the front and back doors of Nancy O’s, prompting him to call on Council to call a state of local emergency.

“The approach that we’re having overall is failing miserably,” he said.

Foley recognized a lot of this is out of City Council’s hands, but he said there are other things that could be done.

“How we’ve been approaching the province, that has more control over the systemic changes that we need, and the federal government, they are not listening, they are not treating this with the urgency that it deserves, this committee doesn’t treat it with the urgency it deserves,” he said.

“I’ve been sitting here for a year and a half, I’ve been sitting in these meetings for 12 years in my role with Downtown Prince George, 12 years, longer than just about everyone here, and I’ve seen a lot of time and effort put into these things.”

At this point, Skakun gave Foley another minute to speak before they needed to move onto other items.

“We’re still losing, that’s the bottom line, we’re still losing as a community, we need to change our approaches and how we get results,” Foley said.

“Ministers in Victoria, they have files, if they’re publicly humiliated, they don’t like that, it makes them look really bad. They’ll be replaced if they’re deemed to be not effective, if more municipalities are speaking up together, and Prince George can lead the charge on that, if we’re speaking up together, and showing Victoria that they are failing their citizens regularly, that means a difference, and that’s the only way we’re going to move the needle on these big systemic changes in the court system, in the medical system.”

Skakun ended Foley’s speaking time there, saying he disagreed with comments about them being “ineffective” or “not caring”.

“I care, everybody that’s in this room cares,” Skakun said.

Foley tried to respond, but Skakun intervened.

“You’ve had your turn to speak, we went to your rally, and the Chamber’s rally and did not speak, and we weren’t going to speak, I appreciate your feedback, we’ve got to carry on.”

The Committee then started with agenda items for the meeting.