Comparing BC’s Parties on Public Safety

Crime and disorder on the streets is not necessarily the top election issue for British Columbians, most of whom are more focused on affordability, health and housing, according to recent polling.

But public safety rates high for enough voters — nearly one out of eight — that it may play a pivotal role in the election outcome, particularly in the Lower Mainland where the BC NDP and BC Conservatives are tied.

Police and researchers say crime in the province is not rising — it’s down. But public perceptions have shifted significantly in the past four years, fuelled by a string of headline-grabbing random assaults and murders.

Last year, after a man on a day pass from a psychiatric hospital stabbed three people in Vancouver’s Chinatown, B.C. Premier David Eby declared he was “white hot angry that this person was released unaccompanied into the community,” vowing his government would "get to the bottom of how this happened."

When governing, the BC NDP spent $21 million to create justice system teams targeting repeat violent offenders and beefed up RCMP funding across the province. It’s also passed anti-hate crime laws. The party’s platform says it’s designed to “make B.C. safer.”

But John Rustad insists that the governing party has made B.C. less safe. At nearly every campaign stop, he raises alarms, reframing safe injection sites as “drug dens,” decrying “criminals terrorizing our communities,” and deploring “chaos on our streets.”

"We have a province that is being overrun by crime,” the BC Conservatives leader said Oct. 7 at a press conference unveiling his party’s public safety platform. “David Eby will say crime stats are down. A big part of that is [...] crime is not being reported. Issues are not being taken forward."

Here’s a look at how the BC NDP, BC Conservatives and BC Greens say they will improve public safety.

‘Swift justice’

The BC Conservatives have pledged to create a new court to hold trials for minor criminal offences within a week of arrest, and to hire more sheriffs and judges to clear court backlogs and “ensure swift justice.”

Rustad’s party also promises to crack down on bail offenders and fight for mandatory minimum sentences for violent offenders.

The expansion of criminal justice infrastructure would incur a significant cost — not tallied in the BC Conservative platform.

Eby too has said that he will continue to push Ottawa on strengthening bail and sentencing conditions. But there is only so much any premier can do, noted Bryan Kinney an associate professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University.

And there may be obstacles to meeting contradictory goals of swift justice and mandatory minimums, according to Kinney.

“People will find a way around objectionable minimum sentences,” often by pleading to lesser offences, he explained. A plea bargain is struck, and the case is concluded quite quickly. Winning a fight for mandatory minimums, however, may cause justice to slow down. Defence lawyers will file appeals that such sentences are cruel and unusual.

Rather than “clogging” the court system, said Kinney, “it generally is in the public interest to have these things sped up and not delayed.”

Sentencing, after all, is guided by precedent, not political will, and mandates are set by the federal government.

Police presence

Rustad’s platform promises more police officers on the streets, in ports and in schools with the creation of a provincial school liaison officer program.

The BC NDP platform points out that the incumbent government has already added $230 million in spending for the RCMP over the past three years and has established an Integrated Gang Homicide Team.

Reducing crimes by the drug dependent and mentally ill

The BC Conservatives aim to work to “reintegrate addiction and mental health treatment into the justice and correctional systems.”

This brings us to involuntary care, which both major parties support to some degree.

Eby has come out strongly in support of changing laws to allow for more involuntary care, an approach he first floated two years ago.

The doctor informing the BC NDP’s proposed policy told The Tyee it aimed to deal with a population of “a few hundred” severely impaired people who could be detained and treated in special facilities to improve their mental health but not necessarily to force them off illicit drugs.

Critics say it may cause people in need to avoid help, and be an abuse of their rights. The BC Conservatives, who champion an abstinence approach to forced recovery that critics say has a low success rate, have provided less detail about how they would enact involuntary care.

Their platform makes a broad promise to bring mental health treatment under the auspices of criminal justice, even appointing an Addictions Specialist with cross-ministerial oversight authority.

Mental health experts worry the party envisions a sweeping approach that intends to reverse two decades of public policy which sought to separate the two while emphasizing harm reduction.

On Sept. 22, Rustad announced that the BC Conservatives would immediately close all safe injection sites. Four days later, after Eby slammed that stance, South Surrey MLA Elenore Sturko said they wouldn’t — at least not right away.

“We should have been more clear,” she said.

Harm reduction remains a priority for the BC NDP, as Eby’s action plan includes a promise to “provide secure, supportive and dignified care” for those who need help. How much of that is involuntary remains to be seen.

Defining who is ‘dangerous’

In his platform, Rustad promises to “make our streets safe again,” a phrase that evokes Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. It vows to “crack down on criminals importing and distributing fentanyl and other potentially deadly drugs.”

The platform also declares “zero tolerance for criminal behavior” in social housing facilities.

And it identifies homeless people as a threat if they are living in “dangerous tent cities.” If elected, say the BC Conservatives, there will be “no tolerance for tent cities on provincially-owned property.”

Kinney sees a worrisome overreach in the party’s conflating of tent city dwellers with criminals. But he acknowledges that populist candidates have effectively used scapegoating to gain votes.

“You identify a group that's a problem,” Kinney says of such politicians, who typically claim the group are not just “a problem for themselves, but they're actually bringing down the system.” Once the group has been named a threat, “it’s easier, then, to start thinking about how they need to be punished.”

The BC NDP’s housing plan acknowledges that tent cities can be unsafe, but that it’s the residents of these encampments who are most at-risk.

A zero tolerance for tent cities policy makes sense if the plan is to provide more housing options. If not, it’s likely doomed to fail while imposing more hardship on the unhoused.

Enforcing federal gun laws

In December, Bill C-21 received Royal Assent, strengthening federal gun laws in many ways including a national freeze on the sales of handguns and semi-automatic weapons. Rustad has said that as B.C.’s premier he would “instruct police not to enforce those laws.”

“Mr. Rustad’s comments on this matter are reckless and deeply irresponsible,” said Eby, in a news release, pointing the BC Conservatives' common refrain — that his public safety solutions are reckless — back at them.

The Greens’ approach

Like the BC Conservatives, the BC Greens agree that the current system isn’t working. Rather than simply give more to police or get tougher on crime, however, the party’s platform promises to “transform the policing and justice systems to prioritize accountability, equity and community safety.”

The party would create a taskforce to investigate cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and children, and establish an all-party standing committee to scrutinize police practices.

The sweeping overhaul includes funding for a comprehensive response system for mental health, addiction and other issues, and the enactment of a new Community Safety and Policing Act.

“We need to do more to address the underlying causes of crime — such as poverty, homelessness, colonization, the rolling back of drug decriminalization, and lack of access to basic services and supports,” said leader Sonia Furstenau.

The BC Greens’ platform, which acknowledges the need not only for safety but the feeling of safety, notes that Indigenous, racialized and marginalized people often are victims of crime. The platform acknowledges that increases in police funding do not address the issue of systemic racism in policing, over-policing in non-criminal matters, or over-incarceration in Black and Indigenous communities.

The Greens’ platform also argues for drug decriminalization, criticizing the NDP’s government retreat from the initiative as “a humanitarian crisis and a policy failure.”

On the latter point, Eby gave his response during last week’s debate.

“We tried it and it didn't produce the results that anybody wanted,” the BC NDP leader said, “So we had to change course. It's a hard problem. It won’t be solved with simple slogans.”