The City of Victoria will spend more than $10-million on new measures to improve public safety in its downtown, its mayor announced Wednesday, an infusion of cash aimed at addressing an outcry from residents and businesses about squalor and disorder.

Nine new police officers will be either hired or redeployed to focus on the downtown and specifically the area around Pandora Avenue. More bylaw officers will be added to the neighbourhood and money has been allocated to transport vulnerable people away from the area to health and other services around the region.

Canada’s spy agency is warning that a small but militant group of Sikhs are using the country as a base for promoting, fundraising and planning violence in India in support of an independent homeland in Punjab, a caution some see as a sign of shifting policies toward New Delhi.

In its annual report to Parliament in June, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said these homegrown extremists represent only a small group among Sikhs who are otherwise pursuing non-violent advocacy for a state they call Khalistan.