Saanich Mayor Dean Murdock says the district is ready to do more after Victoria council members voted in favour of calling on the district, along with all of the Greater Victoria municipalities, to create more emergency shelter beds as winter weather approaches.
At a Thursday, Nov. 8 Committee of the Whole meeting, Tanya Seal-Jones, the city's emergency program coordinator, explained the city's emergency response plan for extreme weather events.
According to Seal-Jones, the city currently has 400 shelter beds, including 50 emergency weather response beds, and more could come in the near future.
"No other municipalities in the region, other than Victoria, have plans to open warming centres in their own community," she told the council.
According to a Committee of the Whole report from October, last winter the city activated the Emergency Winter Weather Response Plan and opened an additional emergency shelter which was operated by auxiliary fire department staff as other resources exceeded capacity.
"The overcrowding posed several issues for Victoria, and it was uncovered that other municipalities sent people to Victoria for emergency weather shelter, assuming this was an acceptable action under a regional protocol. No such protocol exists," noted the report.
Coun. Jeremy Caradonna expressed frustration that the city is taking most of the burden as they hold about 80 per cent of the shelter spaces in the Capital Region. He gave credit to Sooke and Salt Spring Island who have more shelter spaces than both Esquimalt and Saanich.
Saanich, which is the municipality with the highest population, only has 25 shelter beds at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre.
"It's unacceptable that they haven't stepped up to the plate," said Caradonna. "The problem is that when the temperature drops, the expectation is that all those [unhoused] folks go to Victoria, and that is unacceptable. Every jurisdiction has to step up and do their part."
Murdock said he looks forward to continuing the conversation with the City of Victoria and other stakeholders and partners.
"The discussion around shelter beds is an important one, and one that Saanich will certainly be a part of," said Murdock. "We need to have [a talk] among regional partners, all municipalities and our non-profits that provide shelter spaces about how we approach this in a way that's going to ensure that we're providing adequate warm places for people to go during these cold weather events."
He explained that going back almost two decades, Victoria and Saanich have worked together on extreme weather protocols and Saanich has supported Victoria in the past when they sought provincial and federal funding to provide more shelter spaces within the city.
"We want to continue those relationships we need to have among regional [partners]. We're going to need to work together to get senior government resources to create more spaces and we need to be coordinated and aligned in terms of what's going to be created so that people have a place to go during those extreme weather events," he said.
