Vancouver Park Board will start creating a policy aimed at increasing safety at major events in the city.
On Monday, Vision commissioner Catherine Evans’s motion calling for the board to institute a policy to require safety measures for women and other vulnerable groups be included in future contracts with organizers of concerts, music festivals and other large scale events, got unanimous support around the board table.
The motion also calls for the board to encourage organizers of events that have already been approved to adopt such measures on a voluntary basis.
Evans said Tuesday that staff will report back with a draft policy for commissioners to consider.
“I can’t say yet when that will be, but I hope it won’t be too long,” she said in an email.
Evans, who is a member of Vancouver’s women’s advisory committee, said last week that she wanted to introduce the motion following the city’s approval earlier this year of the new women’s equity strategy.
“I am aware from previous media reports coming out of particularly Montreal that women have had sometimes not good experiences at music festivals and the combination of alcohol and music and dancing — all those things can lead to cause women to be more vulnerable to unwanted sexual attention and groping and things like that,” Evans said.
“So I just started doing a little bit of research and learned it’s fairly more widespread.”
A survey released last spring by the Montreal Women’s Council, the Conseil des Montrealaises, found that over 50 per cent of women who attend festivals report being sexually harassed. The study was conducted following a high-profile incident at the annual Osheaga music festival in 2016 where a festival goer said that her reports of someone slipping a drug into her drink were disregarded by event security.
The new board policy would require organizers to include a violence prevention strategy in the planning of an event, provide training for staff and volunteers and provide a safe place that people can use if they’ve had a bad experience.
“We can build that into our contracts and make sure organizers are putting some attention to safety, not only for women but for other people as well,” Evans said.
“They may already have them because it’s becoming best practice but I just want to make sure that we’re doing our due diligence to make sure,” Evans added. “It’s just one more thing to make sure that events run well and that everyone has a really great time.”
Stacey Forrester of Good Night Out Vancouver, a group that is dedicated to providing venues and event organizers with the tools to respond to and prevent harassment and sexual assault, said in a recent interview that move is something the group has been pushing for.
“We’ve been lobbying for a long time for event organizers to be accountable and just like you have to submit a sanitation plan and a food safety plan as part of permitting, you should also have to submit a vulnerable patrons safety plan and I think this is really holding organizers accountable to doing that and it’s really important.”
@JessicaEKerr
jkerr@vancourier.com
