There’s a lot more to installing video surveillance cameras within the District of Sechelt (DOS), than simply getting public approval.
At a regular DOS council meeting May 21, staff included three recommendations in the proposed Community Safety Surveillance Camera System Pilot Project, which was approved – even if only to see what happens next.
The recommendations include a privacy impact assessment be submitted to the BC Information and Privacy Commissioner for pre-approval of a surveillance camera pilot program in the district, that staff engage the public to seek feedback for a surveillance camera system program and a summary of the results be presented to council, and that a DOS public surveillance system be included for council’s consideration as a new service for 2026 prior to July 1, 2025.
But at issue is the fact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commission for BC is not a fan of the use of surveillance cameras in municipalities across the province, a point made clear in a letter included in a package presented to DOS council at the meeting.
In the letter, dated Feb. 7, 2018, Drew McArthur, then acting Information and privacy commissioner for BC, wrote about recent applications for permission to implement video surveillance in public spaces, “on a scale that would be unprecedented in BC.”
“These proposals all assume that video surveillance prevents crime and justifies the persistent invasion of the privacy of law-abiding people who are just going about their day-to-day business,” McArthur wrote. “My office is working with those municipalities to determine whether any of these proposals are lawful, which remains to be seen. A key question we will ask is whether a less privacy-invasive option was attempted.”
McArthur noted while video surveillance is tempting to local governments, he believes it’s an easy way to appear to address public safety issues, rather than “take on the more difficult challenge of the social ills from which crime arises.”
He used the United Kingdom as an example of a location with more than six million cameras, but no significant reduction in crime in urban centres.
“Cameras are particularly poor at deterring violent crime, as those acts occur spontaneously and the perpetrators are not concerned with getting caught, on video or otherwise. Every blurry image we see on the news of a crime being committed was a crime that was not prevented by video surveillance.”
An option within the report asked council to consider that staff be directed to request a proposal from the Sechelt Downtown Business Association outlining a grant program designed to support association members in enhancing public safety. The report noted the proposal should align with the DOS Business Improvement Area Bylaw and may include, but is not limited to, reimbursement to businesses for expenses related to security cameras and other security measures.
Staff told council the funding for the business association is collected through taxes and then the expenditure is decided by its board. One option for the association would be to consider allocating some of that funding to surveillance cameras.
Coun. Darren Inkster said he refers to the systems as “safety cameras.”
“I call them safety cameras for our community, because people are concerned about their safety a lot and I'll use that terminology a lot,” said Inkster. “I think it's about expectations of privacy with the public. That's a legal term that will most likely be used, that the privacy commissioner looks at differently.”
Coun. Dianne McLauchlan said she was concerned about approving the recommendations without knowing where cameras might be installed.
“I think we asked before, what the locations are that we're considering and weren't told, so I'm just a little concerned that if we now know the locations, maybe we should say what they are,” said McLauchlan. “But also, I think sometimes when you put it out there, it almost becomes self-fulfilling, that's going to almost label those locations and people will imagine how bad it could be, instead of whether we need them or not. I mean, the perception of crime is often much worse than it actually is, but you don't want to engender fear in people either.”
But Coun. Alton Toth suggested McLauchlan’s concerns were premature.
“To Councillor McLauchlan’s point, this is jumping really far into the future. We shouldn't be concerned about locations at all at this point,” said Toth. “We're seeing the complexities of gathering information, public information, from these cameras. That's the issue that's got to be solved first, before we even think about locations in a public space. I actually think it's worth going ahead to gather interest, see what interest there is from the public on cameras. I think there's going to be a lot of support, given what I've seen in the Committee on Public Safety. So, I'm interested in going ahead with that. I like staff's other suggestion of dealing with the downtown business association on support for cameras in more stores, because maybe that could be done faster.”
