Vancouver’s 100 police and 100 nurses plan likely to come in 2023

We will likely enter the new year before we see any movement on Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s proposed motion to hire 100 new police officers and 100 new mental health nurses.

After a Vancouver City Council meeting Wednesday, Coun. Lisa Dominato told CityNews the hope is to get the first block of funding by the beginning of the fiscal year, in January, and see hiring in the spring.

“Then it will take a bit of time for VPD and VCH to requisition or hire those staff, so, hopefully in the spring we’ll see hiring in place,” she explained.

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Dominato says the funding for the promised program has received an initial allocation from next year’s budget.

“[We] got an initial allocation of $4.5 million and $1.5 million, respectively, for the 2023 budget to requisition those officers, so, that will start to ramp up in the next number of months after that funding is allocated.”

Sim’s campaign for mayor was centred around public safety, namely his promise of bringing in new police officers and mental health nurses to address crime in the city. His stance led to the Vancouver Police Union endorsing a political candidate for the first time ever.

The new mayor of Vancouver has previously said that the funding for the additional officers and nurses would come as a result of “reprioritization” and not an increase in taxes.

“What we’re going to do when we’re in office is we are going to go line by line on those financial statements and we’re going to see where we can reprioritize. But I want to be very clear, and we said this during the election, we’re going to maintain all the current service levels. We’re just going to look for those things that are discretionary that we don’t necessarily have to — we can make a better choice,” Sim said on Oct. 17, two days after he defeated then-Mayor Kennedy Stewart in the polls.

–With files from Raynaldo Suarez