By Nick Dube

Safe Streets rally draws over a thousand to the CN Centre

Oct 16, 2025 | 9:57 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Over a thousand concerned citizens gathered in the CN Centre Thursday evening for the Safe Streets Prince George rally. The rally was organized by the Prince George Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Prince George with the aim of showing all levels of government that the community believes urgent action is required to combat crime and improve safety citywide. A panel of speakers including downtown business owner Eoin Foley, Dr. Barbara Kane and the Executive Director of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce Neil Godbout. The issues discussed ranged from bail reform to city patrols but all agreed that not enough is being done by all levels of government. Business owner Eoin Foley has dealt with numerous incidents downtown and says levels of government need to step up now before it’s too late.

“In the near term we need some band aid solutions to address some of those safety concerns. We don’t seem to be able to go at night without, buildings always being burned down and often they are. Nobody is addressing the the root causes of some of these issues. We need the provincial and federal governments to really step up and get people off the streets. We saw some positive announcement this morning with bail reform. That’s a huge step in the right direction, but it’s not going to get us all the way there. We need folks that are facing these huge issues in their life with addictions. Brain injuries, homelessness. And not all of them are committing crimes, but we but they need to be off the streets and taking care of. It’s the compassionate thing to do as a society,” said Foley.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement early Thursday of the introduction of a bill which aims to address the issues of bail reform and sentencing issues while recruiting over 1000 new RCMP officers nationwide had many people talking. Many questioned how long this bill would take to see progress and how would this directly impact Prince George. Neil Godbout said the announcement was a step in the right direction but it still leaves many questions.

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That’s an encouraging first step but the the thing is the devil is always in the details. So how quickly can all of this happen and how quickly will these, thousand new officers be deployed across the country. If you think about that, there are ten provinces, three territories and a thousand new officers. How many new officers is that for Prince George? So it sounds great but again, devil in the details about how will this lead to meaningful change and improve results in our community.” said Godbout.

The provincial government was invited to participate in the rally but failed to show up, angering a local MLA.

“So the province should be here listening. Yesterday the community safety minister was in Prince George and he left and tomorrow there’s another NDP minister here. Obviously they chose not to show up tonight even though they were invited. What I think the province needs to do is listen to the people here in Prince George.” said MLA Kiel Giddens.

The rally follows a number of fires downtown in recent months, including a blaze that destroyed CrossRoads Brewing last month.