FLETCHER: It's bad on streets, so to tackle disorder BC takes to containment

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984.Every Canadian city knows the struggle of dealing with drug addiction, mental illness and the street disorder, crime and violence that goes with it. My home city of Victoria has unique issues that make it vulnerable to this, starting with Canada’s softest climate, both in its weather and its politics.The City of Victoria has released a new report that confirms what I and others have been saying for years: Victoria is a chosen destination, not just for street people who hear of it as a land of opportunity, but for other communities that even provide bus tickets and directions to get here. This has been shown in recent years with occasional arrivals from Alberta and Saskatchewan. As Vancouver has hardened the target of its notorious Downtown Eastside, evidence has emerged that Victoria’s problem still extends beyond Vancouver Island..“City staff encountered individuals getting off a bus and seeking directions to Beacon Hill Park,” a staff report informed council March 8. “In the course of subsequent conversation, it was revealed that they had been sent by another local government, with brand new luggage and one-way tickets, from an encampment in the Lower Mainland, and directed to shelter in a Victoria park.”The report forms the basis of the city’s latest effort to enforce its own bylaws and keep its parks and streets from being overrun by a steady stream of incoming “people experiencing homelessness” who overwhelm shelters and supportive housing faster than they can be built. Some are too violent to be allowed in; others refuse.Area hospitals are also discharging patients into Victoria parks, an issue I witnessed this week on a downtown walk. A disoriented man sitting on the sidewalk was still wearing his hospital admission bracelet. City staff say suburban hospitals are providing rides into Victoria..“Patients with ongoing medical conditions have been released from hospital care to a Victoria park and provided with a doctor’s note directed to bylaw services requesting that the Parks Regulation Bylaw prohibition on daytime sheltering not be enforced against them because of their ongoing medical conditions,” the report states.The health authority argues that it discharges people when they are medically stable. Hospitals are not homeless shelters, but if you have to spend time in one, you could be forgiven for concluding that they are.Hospitals were on the bleeding edge of the B.C. NDP’s disastrous experiment with decriminalization of drug possession, with nurses and others walking into clouds of fentanyl or meth smoke. Premier David Eby’s government hastily declared that parks, streets and hospitals were no longer to be given free passes for hard drug consumption, but the crisis continues as police are overwhelmed with calls for service and harried by local politicians who still want to defund them..The province took its latest step last week, moving ahead on the late premier John Horgan’s long-standing vow to move to “involuntary care” for people who are no longer able to make their own decisions. The government has been warned for years that rushing ambulances to overdose calls, sometimes several times for the same person the same day, not only burns out paramedics, it leads to incurable conditions.“There is a small but growing number of people who are living with overlapping mental health and substance use challenges as well as brain injuries from repeated overdoses,” Health Minister Josie Osborne said. “Involuntary care beds” are to be established at B.C.’s Surrey Pretrial prison this month, and this spring at a facility called Alouette Home in the Lower Mainland community of Maple Ridge, Eby and Osborne announced.B.C. Conservative public safety critic Eleanor Sturko, a former long-time RCMP officer, said families looking for addiction treatment will be disappointed.“David Eby’s involuntary care plan will not provide long-term treatment of addiction,” Sturko said. “His involuntary care beds in Surrey Pretrial are for prisoners only … Alouette is tertiary housing for people currently in hospitals with no place to discharge. It is sure to be full on day one of opening.”The NDP and many public health officials remain in the grip of a dangerous myth. They assume that drug addiction is a result of trauma, when often it is the other way around. Recreational drug use is glamourized by our culture, and those who become addicted to potent new drugs then find themselves jobless, homeless and either victims or perpetrators of crime.Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX:@tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: It's bad on streets, so to tackle disorder BC takes to containment

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