At the end of this week, many of us will gather for another meeting of the City of Vancouver’s Four Pillar’s Coalition. Since its creation, the Coalition has helped shape the future of our community for generations to come. In addition to influencing national policy, we have worked hard to improve the quality of life for people suffering from homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction in our city.
At our last meeting, we focused exclusively on prevention. In addition to raising awareness, the input we received from that session has helped shape a partnership proposal for the federal government from the Vancouver School Board. We look forward to a positive response from the Government of Canada following the October election.
At this Friday’s meeting, our agenda will feature updates on a number of things we have talked about at our previous sessions:
- Supportive Housing – Rob Whitlock, Senior Housing Planner with the City of Vancouver will speak about progress on the City’s work with the Province to develop supportive housing in Vancouver. This week at City Council, we are voting to advance over 250 units of new social housing at 1050 Expo Boulevard, 1601 West 7th Avenue and 188 East 1st Avenue. In addition to forgiving property taxes on each of these sites, we will contribute over $10 million to support these developments for people with drug addition and mental illness.
- Community Court – Coordinator Allan Shoom will give us an update on how the court’s work has progressed over the past few weeks. Earlier this month, we celebrated the opening of the new Court in downtown Vancouver. It provides drug users who have been arrested and charged with petty crimes with an opportunity to access an array of services, including health and psychiatric assessment, shelter and treatment options if they plead guilty. In some cases they are sentenced to community service and may be ordered to undergo counseling. In others, they will be given jail time.
- BC Supreme Court Ruling on Insite - University of BC Associate Professor of Law, Margot Young will outline some of the implications of May’s BC Supreme Court ruling in favour of Vancouver's supervised injection site. The Honourable Mr. Justice Ian Pitfield’s landmark ruling said the law governing illicit substances violates the Constitution. I am looking forward to hearing Professor Young’s assessment of this historic decision and how it may impact the development of our drug policy.
- Collaboration for Change - Project Civil City Commissioner Geoff Plant will give us an update on the successful conference we hosted in the spring. The need to address concurrent disorders was a key theme of that session. In this light, Vancouver Coastal Health Addictions Director Heather Hay will also provide an update on the new Burnaby Mental Health and Addictions Centre.
- Mental Health Commission of Canada – Project Coordinator Catherine Hume will provide an update on the work of the Commission – particularly as it relates to a special project for Vancouver. At this spring’s Collaboration for Change Conference, Commission Chair Michael Kirby said a significant portion of the national $110 million allocation would be set aside for our city. He identified concurrent disorders as a top priority for the Vancouver initiative and reassured us we would be the first project approved in the country.
In addition to these important updates, SFU Professor Emeritus Bruce Alexander will speak about some of the issues he has raised in his just-released book, “The Globalization of Addiction”.
I look forward to hearing these presentations and hope you will participate on Friday, October 3, 8:30 am to noon, SFU Segal Centre, 500 Granville Street.
