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  4. Platform 2025 Public Safety

I live in Downtown Vancouver. It is, in my opinion, the most wonderful place in the world. But like many Vancouverites, I have safety concerns.

Ken Sim ran on a balance of enforcement and prevention. He’s given us the enforcement. But where is the prevention? After promising 100 new police officers and 100 new nurses, he delivered 200 new police officers - and just 12 nurses.

We must invest in prevention. I believe that we are all safer when all community members receive the housing, healthcare, and social services they need. To build a truly safe city, we must invest in the solutions that we know prevent crime, and allow police to focus their resources on tackling violence.

Priorities for 2025-2026

I will introduce Peer Assisted Care Teams (PACTs) in Vancouver to work in coordination with Mobile De-Escalation services offered by Vancouver Coastal Health. PACTs are an evidence-based community safety program that dispatches teams of trained civilian crisis-response workers to mental health and substance-use emergencies, where they work to de-escalate situations and connect people to support services.

I will work with BC E-Comm to integrate non-police options into 911 emergency response - whether it is PACTs, or the psychiatric nurses working in the VPD dispatch centre. In 2024, Vancouver Coastal Health reported that the nurses in the dispatch centre had resolved 1,372 mental health emergency calls. Of those, 54% were either resolved by the nurse or diverted to ‘more appropriate’ healthcare-based responses, so that police were not needed.

Principles for a safer Vancouver

We must invest in crime-prevention services like supportive housing.

We must expand harm reduction services, including overdose prevention sites, naloxone kits that reverse an overdose, drug testing, and access to pharmaceutical alternatives to poisoned street drugs.

We must improve access to treatment and detox services for people who seek them.

Patrick Johnstone, Mayor of New Westminster

"Everyone is safer when the right agency responds to each emergency, and when people have the care, supports and housing they need. In New Westminster, we've seen PACT respond to thousands of crisis calls, supporting people in crisis and allowing police to focus their efforts elsewhere, creating a safer city for everyone. It is a model every municipality could adopt - they simply work."