Kelowna: One week after hosting provincial ministers, including the Minister of State for Community Safety and Integrated Services, the Kelowna Chamber welcomes today’s provincial announcement and the steps being taken to strengthen enforcement against vandalism, theft, and street disorder.
Chamber members have been living this crisis. Local businesses are spending thousands of dollars on security upgrades, vandalism repairs, and measures to retain customers and staff — all while absorbing losses that threaten their viability.
The Kelowna Chamber has developed two policies with recommendations to government to address crime’s effect on local business.
While our primary recommendation is to provide tax relief and is not addressed in today’s program, today’s announcement partially addresses one of our recommendations, which is to provide mid-term treatment to chronic offenders – although long-term treatment and removal of chronic offenders to a treatment facility is not addressed.
What is also not addressed in the announcement is why businesses should pay more tax to protect their employees from problems with street crime that government has not yet solved.
Starting October 1, 2026, the 7% PST will apply to private security services — a cost businesses cannot recover, as BC’s PST is non-refundable. For a business that has been forced to hire security precisely because of the crime environment the province is now pledging to address, this is a deeply contradictory and compounding burden.
We repeat our call to the province to recognize this contradictory additional tax burden on business and exempt private security services from the PST expansion. Safer streets and a fairer tax environment should go hand in hand.
The Kelowna Chamber continues to work with government, law enforcement, and our business community to make Kelowna a place where businesses can invest, hire, and stay in business — without chronic losses to crime, and without paying a tax on safety.