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Independent journalism that puts readers first is more vital than ever. Tyee should focus on publishing detailed and factual articles in the public interest without charging access to each reader.
For what? Because a small percentage of regular readers participate in our editorial budget each month, we call them Tyee Builders and they are amazing.
Tyee Builders is the fuel that makes The Tyee run. As other editorials shrink, we’ve been able to expand our team and publish more of our reporters and our expanding independent team, keeping our articles loose and available to everyone.
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Sullivan, a re-election candidate at Vancouver-False Creek, said the organization has the same call as a previous organization, is not the same and does not share the hardline position of former Vancouver Safer, now known as Save Our City. .
“Vancouver’s security is different from a month ago, there’s been a lot of renovations there,” Sullivan told The Tyee.
“These are other teams that merged, split and combined: the Center’s Community Security Surveillance, Save Our City, which used to be Safer Vancouver, and now Safer Vancouver, which is a faction. “
Sullivan is also supported by Dean Wilson, former president of the Vancouver Area Drug User Network. Wilson said he still supports Sullivan because of his track record of supporting Canada’s first injection site in Vancouver.
Sullivan advocated for the electorate who did not need to see an overdose prevention moved to a covered domain of Seymour and Helmcken streets near Emery Barnes Park in Yaletown, saying they feared the resolution would drive more violence, open drug use and discarded needles. your neighborhood.
The town hall passed on Tuesday. Wilson said he thinks the board made the right decision.
The resolution comes amid an increase in overdose deaths and the expansion of homelessness, either aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent overdose statistics show that another 1,202 people have died so far this year, far exceeding 983 deaths by the 2019 total.
In an interview with News 1130 today, Sullivan said drug sites were “ethically contrary. “
“They don’t make medical sense where you have the pharmaceutical characteristics. The supervised injection style is one in which other people will borrow or beg aggressively, or prostitute themselves to make money,” Sullivan said.
Terry Lake, a former Liberal MP from British Columbia who was the province’s minister of fitness at the time of the 2016 overdose crisis, said on Twitter that he was disappointed by the comments. Safe-to-drink sites “keep other people alive and do not update the remedy with opioid agonists, but rather are a component of a comprehensive public fitness technique,” Lake said.
But Sullivan said he was proud of his record vote for Canada’s first safe injection site, Insite, as an NPA councillor. He said that, as mayor, he defended the safe source style for prescription heroin as practiced through the Crosstown Clinic downtown. Eastside and sought to see this program expanded to the point where overdose prevention sites were not necessary.
A safer Vancouver was formed after other homeless people were moved from a tent to the city in Oppenheimer Park on the east side of downtown to the Howard Johnson hotel, now called Luugat, on Granville and Davie streets. in parks after moving in.
The latest issue of Safer Vancouver called damage relief a “failed experiment,” lobbied for an audit of all Downtown Eastside agencies, and partnered with StepUP, an organization of multi-million dollar homeowners who opposed to the BC. NDP’s most sensible home tax, over $ 3 million.
Former spokeswoman Dallas Brodie advised that others with intellectual diseases or addictions be locked up in establishments outside the cities. He’s with Save Our City now.
“He lives Shaughnessy. Es a member of that Yaletown group,” Sullivan said of Brodie’s involvement in the group.
On October 10, Sullivan also made the impression in a podcast hosted by Yaletown resident James Faulkner, who interviewed Brodie several times.
In the podcast, Faulkner said he believed drug users were a “tribe,” while the middle-class citizens of the center were another “tribe” and that either team would struggle to live next to each other.
“The total lifestyle of Vancouver, the tribal component of other people who paint very hard to pay an exorbitant amount for genuine property, probably more than they can, will now have to check to use all the skills they have to navigate to other people’s front. they don’t really provide anything to the community,” Faulkner said in his interview with Sullivan.
At many points in the interview, Sullivan rejected this view, saying that when other people with addictions live in homes where they receive good support, they are “good neighbors. “
Sullivan also talked about the history of drugs in Canada, and explained to Faulkner that Canada followed the American style of law enforcement rather than the British style of treating drug addiction as a medical problem.
“Let’s describe the smart neighbors, ” replied Faulkner after Sullivan’s history lesson. “Do you make a contribution to society?”
Sullivan told The Tyee that Faulkner had other people living in Yaletown and that he sought to publicize his prospects to that person.
Safer Vancouver’s current director, Michael Geldert, spoke to City Hall on October 13 about the Yaletown overdose prevention site. When asked if he was sometimes in favor of safe ingesting sites, he replied: “We don’t need more, more, it’s no better. “
The Tyee asked Geldert if Safer Vancouver supports relief from the wounded and a safe supply. He did not respond, but in an email he said the organization was committed to “advocating for responses that result in relief in the number of other people using drugs on the street, overdose deaths and injuries resulting from the use of harmful supplies. “
Geldert said Safer Vancouver is also interested in studies through Julian Somers, a professor at Simon Fraser University. He said studies show that long-term remedies and supports are more effective than “crisis-based services. “
Sullivan said he disagreed with the Democratic government’s expanded source with ingredients like Dilaudid tablets, which many users then weigh to inject even if the pills aren’t designed to inject.
Sullivan would like to see an expansion of the prescription heroin program still operating at the Crosstown Clinic in Downtown Eastside, a program that began as a study trial and is still limited to less than two hundred participants.
Sullivan was also criticized for adding a quote from Garth Mullins, a journalist and drug advocate, in a recent cross-crusade video to show that damage relief advocates are critical of the NDP’s approach.
The video also included warnings that an overdose prevention in Helmcken and Seymour would bring needles and crime to the neighborhood.
But Mullins replied that his appointment had been used with his permission and called the B. C. Liberals to remove Sullivan from his list.
Read more: Health, B. C. Election 2020, Municipal Policy
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