Originally Posted by
hampstor
I'll do a comparison to Calgary.
To level set what "Victoria" is for everyone else, it's one of several municipalities in the capital region district. Each one has their own town council/tax/police/fire/bylaws/trash and compost pickup/sewage etc. There are common services provided by a group called the CRD (water and recycling pickup). The main municipalities are Victoria, Saanich, View Royal, Esquimalt, Colwood, and Langford. The comparison to Calgary would be like... every neighbourhood being its own city.
The comparison would be Druh Farrell massively expanding homeless programs in her area and ONLY her area. Since it becomes very homeless friendly, more homeless started coming to downtown Calgary. Basic services get overwhelmed. People shitting and pissing everywhere. So they allow camping in prince's island park so homeless are in one area. Prince's island park then becomes a giant homeless camp - complete with a bicycle chop shop, drugs, fighting. The city puts porta poties/medical facilities there. More people show up, and its overwhelming. City buys old hotels downtown, turns them into shelters. There are problems, so they pass laws specifically to address it. City bylaw tries to enforce bylaws, finds that homeless aren't all nice people, and needs help from police (the same police they want to defund). They don't have enough money, as they've driven businesses out with their cycle tracks and other progressive agenda ideas. Calgarians from outside the downtown go 'fuck it, im not going downtown anymore', and the Calgarians who live downtown are now fucked.
The big thing to remember here is unlike Calgary which is one city, the different municipalities don't actually have to agree on things. Victoria may want to allow camping in other parks in say, Saanich, but since it's a different municipality, Saanich will tell them to go fuck themselves and fix the problem they made themselves.
In the last few weeks when it got cold, some of the camps had some crazy fires and shit. One of the fires they lit, someone threw propane tanks or other pressurized containers in, resulting in explosions and people getting hurt. My favourite place to get wings (Heckler's on Gorge), is now a gong show since they bought the hotel its attached to and the parking lot is sketchy as fuck.