A broken glass door at the Jamaican Kitchen on the North Shore (Photo via Jamaican Kitchen/facebook)

An annual survey of North Shore businesses is underway, with early results showing crime and crime-prevention costs are continuing to be a financial burden on them.

The North Shore Business Improvement Association’s Safe Streets Survey, launched earlier this month, shows that small businesses are losing around $5,000 a year to shoplifting, while also paying around $5,000 a year to try to protect and repair their businesses from theft and damage.

North Shore BIA Executive Director Jeremy Heighton says that $10,000 a year figure isn’t universal.

“There is a national chain here in town who has experienced $130,000 in loss related to shoplifting alone,” Heighton said. “There have full time security at the door, that is $100,000.”

Heighton’s comments come as a provincewide program to help small businesses recover costs due to crime and vandalism is due to launch in the next few weeks. That program will be retroactive to the start of this year.

If approved, businesses will be eligible for up to $2,000 for cost of repairs and up to $1,000 for preventative measures like security cameras or gates.

“We recently saw [Vancouver Police] talking about the lack of charges related to over criminality in the downtown core. We think there is a similar issue here in town,” Heighton added, noting thieves in Kamloops are becoming more active and aggressive.

“In some cases, some of these thefts are fairly small, and they’re around crimes of living, like its food to help support them, but in other cases its products that are being removed from stores for resale.”