The Word the Chief Used

In October, Victoria’s new police chief stood in front of City Council and used a word chiefs don’t reach for lightly: “woefully.” VicPD, Fiona Wilson told them, is woefully understaffed.

She wasn’t exaggerating for effect, and she wasn’t posturing for a budget ask. She was describing a department that fields roughly 269 officers against an authorised strength that should put the number closer to 320, a deficit of 50 to 55 officers, a vacancy rate north of 13 per cent, in a city whose population has grown by roughly a quarter since 2011 while its police force grew by barely six per cent over the same period.

That gap did not open this year. It has been widening for over a decade, through Council after Council that talked about public safety as a priority while quietly letting the staffing math fall further behind the population curve.

What Council Is Doing About It

Here is the response to a documented 50-officer hole: the 2026 budget funds eight new positions, four in patrol, four in traffic, as the next instalment of a five-year staffing plan. There’s also a one-time $1.35-million allocation from last July for nine more: seven Beat & Bike officers and two for bylaw enforcement. These are welcome additions. They are also nowhere close to closing the gap Council has known about for years.

So what is the bridge solution for the other 40-plus positions the department needs today, not in 2031? VicPD is now recruiting retired officers back onto three-year contracts and lobbying the Justice Institute of BC for more training seats so it can move recruits through faster. Those are the moves of an institution that knows it cannot wait five years even as the Council that funds it budgets as though it can.

The Pattern You’ve Seen Before

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the same governance pattern this Forum has documented in Victoria’s Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan: identify the crisis accurately, describe it candidly to the public, and then respond with a timeline that bears no relationship to its urgency. The chief says “woefully.” Council says “eventually.” The resident calling 911 from North Park, from downtown, from anywhere VicPD is stretched to its limit, is the one absorbing the distance between those two words.

What I’d Do Differently

A 50-officer deficit is not a five-year line item. It’s an operational emergency that should be treated with the same urgency council reserves for capital projects with ribbon-cuttings attached. As your councillor, I would push to:

• Compress the staffing timeline, reallocating discretionary capital spending toward closing the patrol and traffic gaps inside two budget cycles, not five and require staff to report publicly, every quarter, on progress against that compressed target.
• Pursue the regional and Esquimalt-style integration model seriously, rather than as a talking point sharing specialised units and back-office functions across municipalities frees sworn officers for the front line without waiting on a hiring pipeline that the whole province is competing for.
• Stop asking VicPD to do the province’s job. A meaningful share of the demand straining this department, mental health crises, addiction-related calls, repeat-contact individuals is, by constitutional design, a provincial health and housing responsibility. Every dollar and every officer-hour Victoria spends substituting for provincial inaction is a dollar and an hour not spent on the policing this city controls.

A police force that is 15 per cent short of strength, in a city carrying a disproportionate share of the region’s social crisis, is not a five-year planning problem. It is an emergency hiding behind a spreadsheet and residents deserve a Council that will say so before the chief has to.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer seeking a seat on Victoria City Council in the 2026 election. Drawing on decades of legal experience including some time as a Special RCMP Constable he wants to help build a better city.

Not long ago, Councillor Jeremy Caradonna asked City staff for concrete statistics he could share with residents about Victoria’s Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan. A reasonable request. The plan launched in July 2025 with a $10 million budget and a 79-page strategy. Residents deserve to know what they’re getting for their money.

What he got back was a shrug dressed up as a progress report.

City staff acknowledged they have difficulty “pinpointing exact numbers” because people experiencing homelessness are transient, they said, and tend to congregate near services. The best they could offer: six Indigenous people relocated or returned to home communities since November 2025, and roughly 40 people housed since the outreach program began in 2023. Two years before the plan launched.

The headline from this briefing? “Fewer people on the street.”

That is not accountability, it how the city executes a a communications strategy.

Here’s what Caradonna should have done with that answer: pushed back. If $10 million and eight months of operation can’t produce a number (not a precise number, a ballpark), then the plan has a measurement problem that needs to be fixed before July 2026, when the next “comprehensive update” is scheduled. A plan that can’t be evaluated isn’t a plan. It’s an expenditure.

Instead, the briefing was received as progress. The $750,000 federal grant got mentioned. The trees and benches and art installations got mentioned. The Spark Program for youth got mentioned. All fine things. None of them answer the question Caradonna asked.

Voters should ask it again: How many people are off Victoria’s streets because of this plan? If the answer is still “hard to pinpoint,” that’s the story. Not the headline.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer campaigning as a Councillor for Victoria City Hall in 2026. He has argued that public consultation means little if residents no longer feel safe, heard, or respected in the communities where they live.

The Intersection the City Already Told You Was Dangerous

Blanshard and Cook is, by the City of Victoria’s own published data, one of the highest-collision intersections in the municipality. Construction to redesign it, protected bike lanes, upgraded pedestrian crossings, accessibility improvements, and a new signal at Blanshard and Pembroke is under construction and is scheduled to complete in summer 2026. The City frames the project as part of its broader commitment to “eliminating traffic-related deaths and serious injuries” on Victoria’s streets.

Read that framing again, slowly. The corridor the city itself has identified as among its most dangerous is being redesigned now, in 2026, on a timeline that has far more to do with when the capital budget could accommodate it than with how long residents have been getting hurt there.

A Goal Without a Sequence Is Just a Slogan

This is not an argument against the redesign, it’s plainly a good and overdue project, and I’d rather see it built than criticised into delay. It’s an argument about the distance between the language a city uses to describe its priorities and the pace at which it acts on them. “Eliminating traffic deaths” has real teeth in cities that pair the commitment with a funded, dated, ranked, intersection-by-intersection work plan because a goal without a sequence is just a hope.

Victoria’s own collision data should have driven work at Blanshard and Cook years before “summer 2026” appeared on a construction schedule. Instead, it has arrived on the same institutional clock that produced a safety plan with no performance indicators and a homelessness strategy that, eight months and $10 million in, still cannot tell a Councillor how many people it has actually housed. The pattern repeats across files: name the problem accurately, adopt an admirable goal, and then let the calendar, not the danger, set the timeline.

What I’d Do Differently

A council that is serious about Vision Zero treats it as an engineering and budgeting discipline, not a slogan to attach to projects that were already underway. As your councillor, I would:

• Require a published, ranked, dated list of the city’s highest-collision locations, updated annually with the city’s own data, so residents, not just staff, can see which intersections are next and when, and hold Council to the sequence rather than the sentiment.
• Tie capital prioritisation to injury severity, not just project readiness. A redesign that’s “shovel-ready” two years sooner than a more dangerous intersection’s redesign should not automatically jump the queue; the queue should be set by where people are actually being hurt.
• Report publicly, on a fixed schedule, on collisions and injuries at locations awaiting redesign so that “we’re working on it” comes with a number attached, and so that a stalled project carries a visible, growing cost that council has to answer for in public.

Every month that passes before the Blanshard-Cook upgrade opens is a month residents keep crossing that intersection exactly as they have been, at a corner the city has already told us is dangerous. “Vision Zero” should describe a deadline a Council is held to. In Victoria, so far, it describes a slogan a Council gets to keep.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer seeking a seat on Victoria City Council in the 2026 election. He believes Victoria deserves careful stewardship of public money and decisions grounded in evidence, fairness, and common sense.

One Fact That Should Concern Every Resident

Here is a fact that should matter to every person who lives in this city, regardless of how they vote: the division responsible for Victoria’s preparedness, planning, response, and recovery from a major earthquake, tsunami, flood, or wildfire is housed inside the Victoria Fire Department.

The same Victoria Fire Department that, in 2024, responded to 2,381 overdose-related calls, an average of six and a half a day, and for which medical emergencies can make up more than half of every call it answers. The same department whose own members describe administering naloxone to someone they revived the day before, multiple times a week, on the same stretch of the same street, with no end in sight and no relief on the schedule.

The Question No One at City Hall Wants to Answer

Put those two facts side by side and an uncomfortable question follows naturally: if the long-anticipated subduction-zone earthquake, the “Big One” this region has been formally warned about for decades, struck Victoria tomorrow afternoon, who actually coordinates the response in the first critical hours? The honest answer is: the same institution that, on an entirely ordinary Tuesday, is already operating at the outer edge of what it can sustain.

This is not an abstract or academic point, and it is not meant to alarm for its own sake. Disaster resilience depends on reserve capacity, people, equipment, training hours, and institutional attention that exist specifically for the emergency that hasn’t happened yet. A department fully consumed by the emergency that is happening right now, every single day, by definition has none of that margin to spare. That is not a criticism of the firefighters, who are doing extraordinary work under conditions they didn’t choose. It is a description of a structural vulnerability that no one at City Hall has been willing to name out loud perhaps because naming it means admitting that today’s crisis is quietly consuming tomorrow’s safety net.

What I’d Do Differently

Residents deserve straightforward answers to straightforward questions, and a Council that is willing to ask them before disaster forces the answers into the open. As your Councillor, I would push to:

• Get a clear public accounting of how much dedicated emergency-management capacity the City actually has: staff, equipment, and planning hours that exist separately from day-to-day firefighting and medical response and how that capacity has changed as operational call volumes have climbed.
• Require regular, reported large-scale emergency exercises, with the results, what worked, what didn’t, what it would take to do better, shared with Council and the public, not filed away as an internal staff document.
• Examine whether emergency management should be structurally separated from a fire department that is already operating in a state of permanent emergency so that planning for the disaster that hasn’t happened isn’t perpetually crowded out by the disaster that’s happening now.

If the city’s honest answer to “are we ready for the Big One” looks anything like its answer to North Park, acknowledged in a report, studied at a staff level, and left precisely where it was, residents have an absolute right to know that now, while there’s still time to change it, and not for the first time on the day the ground actually moves.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer running for City Council in Victoria in 2026. He is running to bring greater accountability, transparency, and respect for the public back to City Hall.

Two Blocks From the Inner Harbour

Around 7:45 on a Monday evening in May, a 15-year-old boy walked onto a BC Transit bus near Government and Superior, two blocks from the Inner Harbour, in the heart of the city tourists photograph, and bear-sprayed the driver in the face. The driver was treated and released. The teen was arrested. And the union representing Greater Victoria’s transit workers said, with evident exhaustion, that this was not an isolated event. It was the second assault on one of their members in a single week.

A Pattern the Numbers Confirm

Unifor’s western regional director put a figure on it: more than 100 BC Transit drivers are physically attacked across the province every year. In Victoria, drivers have been hospitalised with serious injuries from on-the-job assaults. The union has floated the idea of a dedicated transit police presence for the capital region. BC Transit’s public answer: not under consideration.

Meanwhile, every bus in this city is already equipped with security cameras and a protective barrier door, engineering responses to a problem that keeps getting worse despite the engineering. You cannot redesign your way out of a crisis whose source is outside the vehicle.

The Worker Nobody’s Writing a Plan For

This Forum has documented in detail how the city’s fire department has become the default first responder to a crisis it was never built to manage, often six overdose calls a shift, more than half its dispatches medical at times rather than fire-related. What gets far less attention is that firefighters at least have a union with institutional standing, specialised training, protective equipment, and a chief willing to tell Council, on the record, that the situation is untenable.

Bus drivers have none of that infrastructure. They have a closing door, a dashboard camera, and, per WorkSafeBC’s own historical classification, the official designation that being assaulted on the job is simply part of the job. That is not a safety standard. It is an abdication wearing the uniform of a workplace category.

What I’d Do Differently

Frontline transit workers are public employees doing essential civic work in conditions that have deteriorated sharply, and they deserve a Councillor who treats their safety as seriously as any other emergency-service file. As your Councillor, I would:

• Press the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Boards and BC Transit to formally study a dedicated transit-safety response unit for the capital region, not dismiss the idea in a press line, but put real numbers on what it would cost against what assaults, sick leave, and recruitment losses are already costing the system.
• Demand that the city formally request WorkSafeBC reclassify driver assaults as the reportable, trackable, compensable workplace violence they are and use the city’s seat at regional tables to make that request with the weight of Council behind it, not just a union behind it.
• Fold transit-corridor disorder explicitly into the city’s public safety data and reporting right now, what happens on a bus seems to exist in a separate universe from what happens on the sidewalk next to it. It isn’t. The same disorder gets on board.

Every one of these drivers works a public route the city has chosen, again and again, to manage through frameworks and “enhanced collaboration” rather than operational response. The disorder downtown doesn’t stop at the curb. It gets on the bus. And the person behind the wheel with no badge, no backup, and no plan written with them in mind is the one left holding the door shut.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer running for Victoria City Council in 2026. He is committed to ensuring that City Hall operates transparently, follows through on its commitments, and respects the rule of law.

Thirty-Nine. Then Eighty

That is the trajectory of police-reported hate crimes in Greater Victoria between 2022 and 2024, according to Statistics Canada data released this past April, a doubling in two years, in a city whose Council speaks fluently, often, and at length about inclusion, equity, and reconciliation.

What the Community Leaders Are Actually Saying

The presidents of local synagogues and the leaders of Muslim community organizations in the capital region say they are not surprised by the trend, only by how quickly it has changed daily life. One described how, not so long ago, a synagogue here could leave its doors open to anyone who wanted to come in. That is no longer how these communities operate, and they are saying so publicly, on the record, to journalists who will print it.

The province has noticed too. It is expanding the BC RCMP’s hate crimes unit from two officers to eight, backed by more than $734,000 in new funding, and citing a province-wide surge that goes well beyond this region.

The Explanation That Doesn’t Fully Explain

West Shore RCMP offers a partial accounting that some of the increase reflects better staff training and more complete reporting, not necessarily a proportional rise in actual incidents. That may well account for some of the change. It likely does not account for a doubling. Improved reporting explains a steeper slope on an existing line. It does not, on its own, draw an entirely new one.

The Silence That Is Itself the Story

Here is what should trouble every resident, regardless of which community they belong to: the same Council that commissioned a 79-page Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan, that speaks confidently and at length about systemic harm, belonging, and community connection, has had essentially nothing public to say about a documented doubling of hate-motivated violence against residents in its own jurisdiction. A Council fluent in the vocabulary of safety has gone quiet on the one form of targeted violence that is rising fastest and landing hardest on identifiable communities. That silence is itself a data point and it’s the kind a law professor is trained to notice, because it’s the kind that shows up in a record long after the moment has passed and the explanations have hardened.

What I’d Do Differently

Hate-motivated violence sits, in part, in provincial and federal jurisdiction but a Municipal Council is not powerless here, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of evasion. As your Councillor, I would:

• Put the StatsCan numbers on a council agenda by name, publicly, and ask staff to report on what the City is doing in coordination with VicPD, the expanded RCMP hate crimes unit, and community organizations to track and respond to this trend at the local level.
• Better support the community organizations already doing this work, synagogues, mosques, cultural associations, rather than one-off statements timed to news cycles. They are the first to see the shift and the last to be consulted.
• Require that any future Community Safety and Wellbeing reporting explicitly track hate-motivated incidents as a distinct category, with public, comparable, year-over-year numbers, not buried inside a broader “community connection” framework where a 100-per-cent increase can pass without comment.

If you are a member of a community that has felt this shift, in how safe you feel walking to worship, wearing a symbol of your faith, or simply being visibly who you are in your own city, you deserve more than a statistic in a federal release. You deserve a Council, and a candidate, willing to name it before the next release shows the number has climbed again.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer running for a seat on Victoria City Council in 2026. His campaign is focused on restoring public confidence in civic institutions through open government and principled decision-making.

Eighteen months after the suspension of firefighter Josh Montgomery for highlighting neighbourhood safety risks, North Park has become the site of a "poverty complex" fuelled by a multi-million-dollar web of property tax exemptions and opaque church-developer partnerships. This investigation details how a dense clustering of high-needs social services and supportive housing, managed by an interlocking network of political and administrative leaders, has sequestered regional social crises within a six-block radius without meaningful community consultation. As the City of Victoria foregoes millions in revenue to subsidise this geographically concentrated infrastructure, the neighbourhood’s family-oriented fabric is being sidelined in favour of high-cost, high-risk social engineering.

The State of the Complex is A Neighbourhood in Transition

The urgent safety and social concerns raised regarding North Park’s Dowler Place, the catalyst for Mr Montgomery’s suspension remain largely unresolved. Rather than scaling back, the City of Victoria has intensified its approach, accelerating development on church lands in partnership with private developers to expand high-density affordable and supportive housing within a tightly defined six-block radius. This has created a concentrated poverty complex, characterised by a dense clustering of social services, housing for vulnerable populations, and ongoing safety challenges. North Park’s streetscape is shaped by a patchwork of old homes, constructed, under-construction, and proposed social housing and service sites, alongside an enormous number of churches including The Church of Scientology, Chinese Presbyterian, Jesus is Lord, Winners Chapel, United Church, and others.

Operational facilities include the Cool Aid Society’s supportive housing at 953 Balmoral Avenue, where visible drug use near entrances poses ongoing safety challenges and strains emergency services. Dowler Place, which has received over $4 million since 2024, allegedly serves approximately sixty people, though activity appears minimal. Caledonia Place, the permanent iteration of Tiny Town, continues providing transitional housing through at least 2026, a project led by former mayor Lisa Helps. The same mayor who leased units at Paul's Motor Inn and Suites to house high-needs individuals, before the provincial conversion costing $15 million, watched as these facilities deteriorated into open-air drug dens plagued by gun violence and fires. Meanwhile, the Wellness House at 938 Mason Street provides culturally supportive transitional housing specifically designed for Indigenous populations.

Geographic Inequity - The Sacrifice Zone

The geographical concentration of these services represents a stark anomaly when compared to Victoria’s broader urban landscape. While North Park carries the weight of dozens of supportive housing units and social service sites within a mere six-block radius, many other neighbourhoods maintain almost no comparable infrastructure. This disparity results in a per-capita service density in North Park that is orders of magnitude higher than the city average, effectively creating a "sacrifice zone" where regional social challenges are sequestered. By concentrating the most vulnerable populations and the accompanying high-impact services in one of the city's smallest geographic areas, the municipal strategy creates a localised burden that undermines social equity and forces a single community to absorb the complex impacts of a regional crisis.

The Church-Developer Nexus Where Faith Meets Real Estate

Major developments underway or proposed include 926–930 Pandora Avenue, a twenty-storey building with 205 units, including 158 affordable rental homes managed by the Capital Regional Housing Corporation and 47 supportive units overseen by BC Housing. Construction began in 2025 and is expected to complete by 2028. Discovery Street’s 90 supportive housing units are set for completion in 2027. The Balmoral Road and Quadra Street development, a partnership between the United Church Property Development Council and Aryze, is progressing amid concerns about heritage preservation and commitments to affordability.

Aryze has a controversial track record, having scaled back affordable housing components after city approval in other projects, raising serious questions about transparency and accountability. Aryze has also emphasised that the land remains church-owned, meaning the worship portion of the church retains tax-exempt status while public funds, including BC Housing grants administered by Christine Boyle as Minister of Housing, support construction and operations. This financial arrangement highlights a key tension in the North Park poverty complex: public money funds projects at least in part on land that may not be contributing property tax revenue, raising ethical and governance concerns.

Follow the Money for Property Tax Exemptions in the Millions

Currently, in British Columbia, places of public worship receive a statutory property tax exemption for the worship building and the land directly beneath it. Additional portions of church property (parking, halls, excess lands, etc.) can receive a permissive exemption at council’s discretion; this is not automatic and varies by municipality. Separate from religious exemptions, certain supportive housing projects can benefit from a “Class 3, Supportive Housing” designation, which also affords significant property tax relief for eligible non-profit supportive housing.

Victoria is using permissive exemptions at scale for churches and housing‑related entities. This is revealed by the recent Tax Exemption (Permissive) Bylaw, 2026-2028, No. 25-059. Notice of the Bylaw is given by the city pursuant to Section 224 of the Community Charter. The stated purpose of the Bylaw is to exempt from taxation under section 197(1)(a) of the Community Charter each parcel of land described together with any specified improvements. The Bylaw also conveniently estimates the forgone taxes if the exemptions were not applied. It is clear from the Bylaw that church land and supportive housing sit largely off the tax roll.​

The Four-Million-Dollar Subsidy - Quantifying Foregone Revenue

The total foregone tax revenue across all 141 parcels covered by the city Bylaw, calculated as if no exemptions were granted, amounts to approximately $4.34 million in 2026, $4.53 million in 2027, and $4.66 million in 2028. This represents a substantial financial commitment by the municipality to subsidise various entities through permissive tax exemptions.

Breaking down the combined three-year total by broad category reveals the distribution of this foregone revenue. Places of worship and faith-based entities account for approximately $2.78 million in foregone taxes. Housing and supportive housing providers represent approximately $1.31 million in lost municipal revenue. City-owned properties contribute approximately $1.57 million to the total. Other non-profit, cultural, and social service organisations, including museums, theatres, galleries, and various community services, account for approximately $7.87 million in foregone taxes.

When combined, churches, faith entities, housing providers, and supportive housing organisations together represent roughly $4.09 million of the three-year total under this Bylaw alone. This figure excludes statutory exemptions mandated by provincial law, meaning the actual total tax relief granted to these categories is even higher. The concentration of such substantial municipal subsidies within a single neighbourhood raises fundamental questions about equity, accountability, and the true cost of Victoria's approach to addressing homelessness and affordable housing through geographically concentrated development.

North Park Church and Faith-related Tax Exemptions: Recipients

These rows show 100% land and 100% improvements exempt, meaning the whole assessed parcel in the relevant class is taken off the tax base for the term. Some churches with large parking areas (e.g. Coastline Church) show partial taxable parking square footage that phases from 80% taxable in 2026 to 100% taxable later, while the remainder of land and all improvements are exempt; this suggests the city is deliberately carving out or including parking as it chooses.

BC Conference Property Development Council is The United Church’s Real Estate Arm

The mandates of the Development Council are to locate, erect, and purchase, hold or sell land and buildings to carry on the work of the United Church and to receive contributions and grants and to apply these as the Council sees fit. The financial objective of the Development Council is to invest and use resources as effectively as possible to advance its mission recognising that the assessment effectiveness may be based on church values that differ from typical profit maximisation. The Council is controlled by the BC Conference and is a registered Canadian charity, incorporated under the Society Act of British Columbia and thus not subject to income taxation.

The property‑holding corporation created under the BC Conference continues under its original corporate name (“BC Conference Property Development Council of the United Church of Canada”) This is the name that appears in land titles and in Victoria’s Permissive Tax Bylaw despite the fact that a reorganisation in 2019 ended the BC Conference as a governing church body and replaced it with the Pacific Mountain Regional Council.

Operationally, congregational properties identified as “development properties” are transferred to the Development Council at a nominal book value (e.g., $1 per property).​ It then enters into agreements with private developers, temporarily transfers title to the developer for the project, and, when completed, receives title back. Ultimately it retransfers the property to the congregation while earning a fixed service fee and a 2% participation payment on the aggregate transaction value.​

North Park Housing and Supportive-Housing: A Parallel Tax-Exempt Network

For entities clearly associated with housing/supportive housing, the Bylaw shows:

Many of these housing providers have 100% land and 100% improvements exempt, effectively zeroing out municipal tax on their parcels for the term.​ A subset show more complex treatment (e.g., Pacifica and Cridge) where only certain units or leased space are exempt and some improvements/ land remain taxable, but the overall pattern is substantial permissive relief for supportive housing.

Systemic Concentration Validates the North Park Thesis

The Bylaw and these tables show that Victoria is systematically using permissive exemptions to give tax relief to a long list of churches and faith entities, including the United Church’s Development Council, not just its worship footprint.​ They also show that housing and supportive‑housing providers (Cool Aid, Pacifica, Native Friendship, Threshold, Anawim, John Howard, Transition House, etc.) receive large, often full, permissive exemptions on their parcels, on top of any statutory/provincial class‑based relief.​ In aggregate, churches/faith bodies plus housing/supportive‑housing entities in this single Bylaw account for approximately $4M in annual foregone municipal tax, while many of those same parcels are heavily supported by BC Housing and other public funding streams.​

The Neighbourhood Fabric of Cannabis, Safe Supply, and Academic Drug Testing

The dense concentration of churches also overlays licensed cannabis outlets, safe drug testing sites, and harm reduction outreach facilities that further complicate the neighbourhood’s social fabric. Even the University of Victoria is subcontracted by SOLID (originally Society of Living Intravenous Drug Users, more recently Society of Living Illici Drug Users) to conduct on-site drug testing, reflecting a formalised partnership between academic institutions and local supportive housing and harm reduction programs. This integration highlights how public, private, and educational entities collaborate to manage substance use within the neighbourhood yet also underscores the density of vulnerable populations near children, families, and everyday community life.

The co-location of vulnerable populations, including people with substance use challenges, low-income families, youth, and formerly incarcerated individuals, raises serious questions about public safety and social cohesion. Community voices, particularly those of family caregivers and parents, have been largely excluded from planning. Policies labelled pro-family do not fully acknowledge families’ real-world concerns about safety and exposure to high-risk environments. Children, young women, and families are expected to coexist safely alongside high-needs residents, visible drug use, and supportive housing programs without meaningful consultation or mitigation measures. Emergency services remain stretched, exemplified by fire crews responding frequently to the Cool Aid building on Pandora, reflecting the ongoing operational demands of this dense social infrastructure.

Beyond the immediate danger to personnel, the systemic response to neighbourhood instability carries a hidden and compounding fiscal burden for Victoria’s taxpayers. Following high-profile safety incidents involving first responders, operational protocols now often necessitate police accompaniment for paramedics and fire crews entering high-risk zones within the North Park poverty complex. This requirement effectively doubles or triples the personnel cost for every medical or fire call in the area, as a standard health intervention is transformed into a multi-agency security operation. When aggregated across the hundreds of monthly calls for service on Pandora Avenue and surrounding blocks, these secondary costs represent a permanent "safety surcharge" on the municipal budget, one that is necessitated by the concentration of services but remains largely omitted from the official operating budgets of the supportive housing facilities themselves.

The Hidden Costs and Fiscal Burden

The institutionalisation of this "poverty complex" stands in direct opposition to the city’s broader planning objectives, specifically the "15-minute community" framework that purports to prioritise walkable, diverse, and family-centric neighbourhoods. While official policy describes a North Park where residents can access all daily needs within a short walk, the operational reality of the neighbourhood has shifted toward a specialised hub for high-needs services. The resulting atmosphere, marked by emergency response protocols that now necessitate police escorts for paramedics, actively discourages the foot traffic and local commercial investment essential for a vibrant urban village. Consequently, the municipal government appears to be pursuing a contradictory path, utilising North Park as a sacrifice zone for regional social problems while simultaneously branding the area as a model for modern, sustainable urban living

The Church as Developer for Strategic Real Estate Ventures

Once again, much of the land utilised for these projects is owned by churches, which historically enjoy property tax exemptions. The United Church’s establishment of a development/property arm reflects a strategic effort to offset declining congregational revenues and burdensome maintenance costs through real estate ventures. The United Church is actively redeveloping land (including the Balmoral/Quadra project with Aryze) into mixed-use rental and community space. Those projects often involve a mix of market, “affordable,” and sometimes supportive units, with capital and operating funds from BC Housing and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs. Where the church continues as owner of some or all the land, the worship component qualifies for statutory exemption, and the municipality may choose permissive exemptions for additional portions.

These church-developer partnerships leverage public funding, including government grants and BC Housing subsidies targeted at affordable housing, while retaining tax-exempt status. While the intention is to provide for vulnerable populations, the financial model blurs sacred stewardship with profit-driven development, creating ethical and governance complexities. Many residents continue to migrate short distances to activity centres on Pandora Avenue known for visible drug use and social disorder, underscoring gaps in harm reduction impact.

This financial model represents a staggering economic delta that is rarely quantified in public discourse. By transferring prime North Park real estate to the BC Conference Property Development Council for a nominal $1, the true fair market value of these assets is effectively erased from the public balance sheet. When these undervalued parcels are subsequently granted massive density increases, such as the twenty-storey tower slated for 926–930 Pandora Avenue, the resulting 'lift' in land value serves as a significant, non-transparent subsidy to the private development partners. This arrangement, coupled with the multi-year property tax exemptions granted by the city Council, means the public is not just funding the construction through BC Housing, but is also forfeiting the historical wealth and future tax potential of the neighbourhood’s land base to facilitate a private-sector delivery model.

Political and Administrative Players and Those Behind North Park's Transformation

Political and administrative leadership in North Park’s redevelopment includes Mayor Marianne Alto and Victoria City Council, including members such as Jeremy Caradonna, Krista Loughton, Matt Dell, and Susan Kim, and Dave Thompson who continue endorsing high-density affordable and supportive housing strategies despite public safety and community consultation concerns. Matt Dell is a career civil servant and has been the Director of Legislation for the provincial government for the last 11 years, the ultimate "insider" position. As Director Dell doesn't just follow laws; he is part of the senior civil service team that drafts and navigates them through the provincial system. His day job involves working directly with Ministers and Cabinet to turn political goals into legally binding statutes. This includes the very housing and municipal affairs legislation that has "downloaded" social crises onto neighbourhoods like North Park. He is also in a classic conflict of interest position give the Oaths of Office that he took as both a provincial employee and a municipal councillor. To many these two roles would be impossible to reconcile but Dell simply carries on oblivious to it. This background explains his specific voting style on Council, prioritizing "statistically valid" surveys and technocratic data over qualitative resident feedback. He views municipal governance through the lens of a provincial architect, not a neighbourhood advocate and has votes against public engagement.

Christine Boyle, Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs for British Columbia and an ordained minister of the United Church, oversees BC Housing funding and policy which would include the very projects that overlay church-owned land. Allison Ashcroft is a former Environmental Planner and long-time Executive Board Member and Treasurer of the North Park Neighbourhood Association. She currently serves as Director of Sustainability for the Municipal Finance Authority of BC. The Authority functions as the infrastructure bank for all BC municipalities and regional districts. Her combination of experience, moving from internal municipal planning to neighbourhood advocacy and now to the infrastructure bank that finances city projects is a key part of her role in the “shadow governance" narrative of Victoria's urban development.

City spokesperson Colleen Mycroft seemingly enforced a communications blackout beginning in August 2024, limiting public discourse around these topics. Former Mayor Lisa Helps, rather than being held accountable for early decisions that shaped North Park’s redevelopment, was rewarded with a senior provincial role as Executive Lead, BC Builds, Project Origination, allowing her to scale up her approach to affordable and supportive housing across British Columbia. The choice to hire her at the provincial level raises serious questions given the ongoing safety, social, and financial issues stemming from her city-era projects.

Shadow Governance and the Revolving Door

The efficacy of oversight is further clouded by a network of interlocking directorates that creates a "shadow governance" structure over North Park’s redevelopment. When individuals hold concurrent or sequential roles across municipal staff positions, neighbourhood advocacy boards, provincial funding agencies, and the non-profit societies receiving those funds, the traditional boundaries of accountability dissolve. This "revolving door" environment, where the same individuals effectively populate every stage of the planning, funding, and implementation pipeline, risks prioritising institutional momentum over genuine public interest. Such an arrangement fosters a closed-loop decision-making process that is inherently resistant to outside critique, as the roles of the regulator, the advocate, and the recipient of public funds become indistinguishable within a small cohort of stakeholders.

Spending Priorities are Swimming Pools and Safe Supply, But No Bus Passes

North Park's development unfolds alongside major municipal projects, including a new two hundred-million-dollar swimming pool. While city funds flow freely into high-cost recreational infrastructure, frontline services remain chronically underfunded, and families navigating the dense social housing landscape and areas marked by visible drug use confront daily safety concerns. The juxtaposition underscores troubling spending priorities and raises fundamental questions about whether young women, children, and families can safely live and move throughout the neighbourhood.

At Dowler Place alone, over four million dollars has been spent since 2024 to house perhaps sixty individuals, equating to approximately sixty thousand to seventy thousand dollars per resident. Yet visible occupancy remains minimal, raising serious questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending. While tens of millions of dollars are allocated to housing vulnerable populations, other elementary services remain chronically underfunded, underscoring stark imbalances in public resource allocation. The contrast between lavish spending on problematic housing sites and minimal investment in basic family services creates a picture that many residents find both striking and deeply concerning.

Silencing the Whistleblower or The Cost of Speaking Truth

Under British Columbia law, employees are protected when raising legitimate safety concerns through mechanisms such as the Workers Compensation Act, the Public Interest Disclosure Act, and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation. Josh Montgomery's suspension for raising safety concerns exemplifies a systemic failure to protect frontline advocacy and accountability. First responders are among society's most noble protectors and penalising them for voicing legitimate concerns undermines public safety, erodes trust, and sends a chilling message to others who might speak up.

A City-Crafted Social Experiment without an Exit Strategy

North Park represents a city-crafted social experiment, a dense poverty complex where church land financial strategies, developer ambitions, municipal and provincial housing policies, and vulnerable populations intersect amid strained public services and opaque governance. The failure to meaningfully engage families, frontline workers, and the broader community while expanding dense poverty infrastructure challenges Victoria’s social cohesion and public safety. Respecting whistleblowers like Josh Montgomery, fostering transparent policymaking, and integrating real-world family perspectives are essential to steering North Park toward a truly safe, accountable, and equitable future.

Arthur McInnis is a law professor and former construction lawyer campaigning as a Councillor for Victoria City Hall in 2026. He believes residents should not have to choose between compassion and public order, and that effective local government must protect both vulnerable people and the broader community.