Lisa Helps

Helps oversaw the removal of the city's statue of John A. Macdonald from the front of Victoria City Hall, which took place three days after the city council voted for it on august 8, 2018. The decision was taken after one year of consulation and the support of the city family.

Helps was reelected to a second term as mayor of Victoria in the 2018 municipal election.

In June 2017, the city of Victoria created the Witness Reconciliation Program and the City Family. The latter is a group composed of Mayor Helps, several Victoria city council members, and people appointed by the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations' Councils. The City Family's objectives are to guide Victoria on how the city can response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)'s five calls to action intended for municipalities, and also to realize the TRC's awareness mandate on a local scale and to promote reconciliation in general.

Helps was first elected to Victoria City Council as a city councillor in the 2011 municipal election. She has also worked as a community organizer and activist, including time in the role of executive director of a community microlending program. Her mayoral campaign revolved heavily around a proposal to launch a more ambitious plan to deal with the issues of homelessness and affordable housing in the city and was also boosted by voter frustration over delays in the Johnson Street Bridge construction project and a controversial sewage treatment plan that has been a dominant issue in the city's municipal politics for several years.

Lisa Helps (born April 6, 1976) is a Canadian politician, the current mayor of Victoria, British Columbia, with her inauguration taking place on December 4, 2014. She narrowly defeated incumbent mayor Dean Fortin in the 2014 municipal election. She is the second woman, after Gretchen Brewin, to be elected mayor of the city.