Vancouver Billed Itself as a Restorative Justice City. Until Budget Cuts

Four years after Vancouver city council passed a motion endorsing a citywide restorative justice project, the framework for implementing the alternative justice model across schools, housing, policing, neighbourhoods and parks was released last week .

But without ongoing sustainable funding from the city and other levels of government, the dream of implementing alternatives to policing and prison for everything from neighbour disputes to criminal activity may not happen, says the organization steering the effort.

“We will save money,” said Evelyn Zellerer, founder and director of Peace of the Circle. Peace of the Circle is leading the Restorative Vancouver project alongside the Restorative Collective — over 40 municipal, provincial and non-profit organizations whose input guided the framework’s development and now its implementation.

Public safety costs a lot of money when police and incarceration are its only tools, Zellerer said. Yet the City of Vancouver did not provide funding for the Restorative City project this year, unlike previous years. The funding cut happened after city council voted to approve a budget with no property tax increase.

While most other departments had their budgets cut or frozen, the Vancouver Police Department received a 10 per cent or $46.2-million budget increase, bringing its total annual budget to just under half a billion dollars.

“The government is spending a tremendous amount of money right now on the legal system. We can be doing a lot more preventative work,” Zellerer said. “Building capacities locally, and being more effectively responsive.”

Zellerer has been training and mentoring restorative justice facilitators globally since she launched Peace of the Circle in 2004.

The organization’s name relates to the restorative justice model they use, the peace circle . When conflict or harms happen, perpetrators, victims and their support people sit in a circle with a restorative justice facilitator for either a single meeting or a series of guided discussions.

The aim is to reach understanding and accountability for the harms perpetrators cause, as well as finding an appropriate response that meets the needs of people directly involved and their communities.

“Crime is more than breaking the law; it’s a violation of people and relationships. And so when there is harm or violations of any kind, it creates an obligation to resolve and amend it, make it right,” said Zellerer.

Restorative justice, she added, is “advocating that crime hurts, so justice should heal.”

It’s not a new concept. While a historical record of restorative justice models can be found around the world, it is also found among Indigenous people, including First Nations here in B.C.

“Circles are ancient,” said Norm Leech, a St'át'imc Nation member. Leech is the executive director of Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House in Vancouver and a facilitator with Peace of the Circle.

“To me restorative justice is relearning how we used to resolve conflicts between ourselves, face to face,” Leech said. “Before we somehow became afraid of having the conversation... of potential conflict, potential confrontation. And that fear of the worst-case scenario would lead us to phone the police instead.”

A restorative justice city, according to the framework, is one that uses restorative practices as a first response to conflict and harm. The legal system continues to operate in the background “for those who choose or require it,” the framework notes.

A restorative city approach means building strong relationships between Vancouver’s many communities and services. This lays the groundwork to prevent some harm from happening in the first place, Zellerer said.

But it also addresses the conflicts and harms that do occur by creating accountability, while centring what connects people, communities and systems instead of focusing on what divides them.

Fully implemented, the Restorative City Framework would make Vancouver the first restorative justice city in Canada, a model for other municipalities to follow.

But it won’t get there without renewed and sustainable government funding for implementation and operation, Zellerer said.

Currently, with the exception of a couple of programs specifically for Indigenous people and some youth convicted of a crime, there are no restorative justice programs in Vancouver.

“There’s a very clear answer of why we don’t have it,” said Zellerer. “And that’s because it’s not being funded.”

Vancouver the outlier

Vancouver is a bit of an outlier in B.C. in terms of not having a restorative justice program, according to a motion introduced by then-councillor Michael Wiebe in 2022 to support the concept of a restorative justice city.

This included a one-time financial allocation of $150,000 for Restorative Collective’s work and, later, $50,000 towards the establishment of the Hastings-Sunrise restorative neighbourhood project.

The motion, which council passed, cited over 80 restorative justic…