We know how to prevent bridge suicides; why aren’t we doing it?

Emma’s account is drawn from her testimony to Vancouver City Council.

Emma is in the ninth grade. She lives next to the Granville Street Bridge. Earlier this year, she stood before Vancouver City Council and asked a question that no child should have to ask: “Since when do we put a price tag on human life?”

Emma has witnessed tragedy on that bridge since she was 12. She has watched people in crisis on the railing. She has seen people jump. She described lying in bed at night, terrified of what she might hear. She told the council she can barely keep her blinds open anymore because of what she might see outside her window. Those experiences, she said, do not leave you. They steal your sense of safety and change how you feel in your own home.

Emma is not alone. Residents, families, workers on Granville Island, and community members along the bridge corridor have been raising these concerns for years. Her testimony brought painful clarity to a debate that has gone on far too long. The Granville Street Bridge averages approximately 2.6 suicide deaths every year. Funding for barriers has been delayed, made contingent on other levels of government, and at one point removed from the City’s capital plan entirely.

The evidence has never been in question. Barriers were installed on the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in 2015 and on the Burrard Street Bridge in 2017. There have been no suicide deaths on either bridge since. Research consistently confirms the same pattern: physical barriers at high-risk locations reduce suicides, and people do not simply move to another site. The intervention works. The barrier creates time: for pause, for connection, for help to arrive. And 90% of people who survive a suicidal crisis do not go on to die by suicide. That means a bridge barrier can be the difference between a life that ends and a life that thrives.

The Crisis Centre appeared before Vancouver City Council on June 3, 2026, alongside community members, health officials, and business leaders from Granville Island, to support Councillor Dominato’s motion to restore barrier funding to the capital plan. The motion passed unanimously. That outcome matters, and is the result of years of sustained advocacy by many people, including those at the Crisis Centre who have worked for barriers at every opportunity. Even more hopefully, the City is starting stakeholder work on bridge barrier design, and has invited the Crisis Centre to be a part of making the bridge barriers a reality. Our work made the Burrard Street Bridge barriers happen. We will make the Granville Bridge barriers happen too.

Beyond Granville

The Granville Street Bridge is only one part of a larger picture. Across the region and the province, suicide means prevention remains an afterthought in infrastructure planning. Advocates and community members must fight for it project by project, bridge by bridge. The Crisis Centre believes the solution lies at the systems level. Barriers should be a design requirement from the beginning, embedded in building codes and architectural standards, expected as a baseline whenever a new bridge is designed or significantly retrofitted. Suicide prevention should not depend on someone having to ask for it. It should already be there.

Emma has already written to the Prime Minister’s office and received a response indicating her concerns have been forwarded to federal ministers. A ninth grader should not have to carry this. But her question, and the courage it took to ask it in front of council, captures something we have long known: we have the evidence, we have the tools, and every day we wait is a day we could have prevented a death.

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Crisis lines are available across British Columbia 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you or someone you know needs help, please call:

• 9-8-8 (call or text)
• 310-6789 (no area code needed)
• 1-800-SUICIDE / 1-800-784-2433
• 604-872-3311