What Happens to a Complaint?

During normal business hours, complaints are assigned to an officer based on the location of the problem.
If you call after hours or on weekends, your complaint will be forwarded to an on-call Officer who will start the complaint follow-up process, and if not resolved by the next business day, will assign it to the regular Officer.
The Officer reviews your complaint to understand the problem and decides if they need to call you back for more information.
If we do not have the authority to deal with your complaint, we refer you to the correct organization. For example, we refer complaints about ship emissions to Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and complaints about noise to your municipality.
If we are the responsible authority, the Officer may visit the site to gather more information and assess the seriousness of the situation.
If a suspect source can be determined, they will be contacted to inform them of the complaint (without identifying you) and obtain information about their operations.
The Officer’s primary objectives are to find the source of the problem and work with the parties involved to resolve the issue.
Sometimes we are not able to find the source or there is no simple solution.
If the issue is resolved, the complaint will be closed.

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