Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is lashing out at the B.C. government about funding new involuntary care beds, but not “where they’re needed most.”
Sim posted a letter on social media stating that, “Once again, the Province has chosen to ignore the city carrying the greatest burden of British Columbia’s addiction, mental health, and public safety crises.”
B.C. Premier David Eby was in Prince George on Friday to announce two new involuntary care facilities — a $92 million 72-bed one in that northern community and a $57-million 60-bed site in Surrey.
The province currently has some 2,000 “involuntary care” beds in all ,with the promise of more to come, but no mention of Vancouver.
“For years, Vancouver has shouldered a disproportionate share of the province’s most complex social challenges,” Sim said.
“Yet with the Province announcing new involuntary care capacity, Vancouver is again left with nothing, not a single new bed.”
“This is an ongoing piece of work and we’re working with other regions of the province, including the Okanagan and Vancouver Island, to identify facilities and opportunities in those communities,” Eby said on Friday.
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While the province is focused on finding existing sites that can be more easily and quickly transformed, such as in Prince George and Surrey, critics say the beds are needed now, the Eby government needs to move faster and Vancouver has to be part of the solution.
“We know that if there’s an area anywhere in this province that was in dire need of mandatory care, it’s probably Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside,” Claire Rattée, the official Opposition critic for mental health, addictions, and social housing, told Global News.
“So I do think it’s definitely a problem that Vancouver has once again been left out of this.”
Most of the $131 million set aside in the last B.C. budget for intensive mental and addictions treatment is earmarked for involuntary treatment beds.
“The Province cannot continue to acknowledge the need for involuntary care while refusing to build the very infrastructure required in the community where the need is greatest,” Sim said.
“When it comes to providing treatment, recovery, and involuntary care for those suffering from the most severe mental illness and addiction in Vancouver, Premier Eby and the Province do nothing.
“That is the wrong priority.”
Meanwhile Ken Sim is the most corrupt mayor Vancouver has ever had
Right now, this BC gov has me literally by the balls. I am still waiting for a biopsy and treatment. Stsem says another month at least meanwhile my urologist is very concerned.
My life is about to change. I am about to lose everything because of this disease and this f8cking government is COMPLICIYT IN MY DEATH SHOULD THAT HAPPEN! F*CK YOU EBBY AND THE NEEDLES, DEATH AND POVERTY PARTY!
That’s because all of Vancouvers homeless repeatedly get put on busses to the interior and North to give the FIFA perfect perspective that Vancouver city was a beacon of social order during the games and to the world.
PG gets the facilities because we’ve been caring for your homeless and drug addicted for years. They are dying on the streets in record numbers here and the media stays silent. And you Mr Mayor were wilfully blind to that fact, and likely paying off the Pg mayor and counsel to provide services for them while they overdosed with fentanyl laced drugs on the streets of Prince George… which likely wasn’t a random choice of location for all media reports to then be linked to the Royal family in a simple google search. Whole lotta communist ideals happening in this Province. The death statistics for the region support this. Find a crime analyst. There is evidence. Report the facts and quit enabling the killing of drug addicted and mentally ill Canadians.
Seems to a disconnect between the government and province. May be there are instances of Hypoxic Reality Perception Syndrome occurring in the departments ?
Eby is a human rights lawyer and civil liberties advocate, the wrong idiot for politics
Eby has done literally NOTHING while in office…NOTHING!!!!
He deserves to be slammed, fired, and barred from public service PERMANENTLY and Corus hides his incompetence by way of failing to do THEIR job and report on it…enabling this crime every single day
We are run by criminals, puppets and the corporation.
This has to be addressed…it’s called sabotage and the BC NDP knows no other way.
Ban Corus – global News is fodder
Eby is always full of big talk but lacks when it comes to delivering what’s needed. What he is promising is not enough by the time these beds arrive the need will be greater again. Remember the 4 pillars approach that was going to get people off drugs well we never got passed the safe injection sites a total failure. All it did was give people a place to take drugs with medical help if needed. It would be interesting to know how many have actually managed to get off drugs using all these programs that the NDP have brought forward and wasted money on. All that money could have been building rehabilitation places over the years.
“When it comes to providing treatment, recovery, and involuntary care for those suffering from the most severe mental illness and addiction in Vancouver, Premier Eby and the Province do nothing.
“That is the wrong priority.”
Eby once again…. Looses site of what we REALLY need in Vancouver, Surrey, Langley!!
Get you head out of your ass and fix this!!!
We need at least 1000 beds in each of these places.
What you “really” need to do is open a facility that can treat people with mental health and drug addictions, they DO NOT belong in our hospitals.
Remember Riverview Hospital? That was a good place to help these people, you closed it July 2012 and everything went to s*it. Now you call it Red Fish Healing Centre opened in Oct 2021 with only 105 beds??? Seriously??? MORE beds are needs for these people.