Is Richmond-Bridgeport MLA Teresa Wat aware that there is no stand-alone consumption site in her city?
Yesterday, I read an alarming news release from the B.C. Conservative Party. The leader, John Rustad, and the MLA for Richmond-Bridgeport, Teresa Wat, announced “their commitment to shutting down every single drug den injection site in the City of Richmond”.
Here’s my problem with this announcement: Vancouver Coastal Health does not operate a single stand-alone supervised-consumption site in Richmond. This is written clearly on the City of Richmond website in English and Traditional Chinese. There two “safe-use rooms” at modular housing sites, according to an interview Mayor Malcolm Brodie had with CKNW Radio host Jas Johal. These rooms are only open to residents.
Vancouver Coastal Health only operates three overdose-prevention and supervised-consumption sites outside of Vancouver—in Powell, River, Sechelt, and Squamish—according to its website. These sites do not distribute illicit drugs to the public, nor do they support the use of illicit drugs by children or non-users.
I’m seeking enough signatures to become a nominated independent candidate in Richmond-Bridgeport because I want to elevate the level of political discourse in this constituency. In Richmond-Bridgeport, a political backlash led the NDP government to put a 90-unit supportive housing project on hold.
I am going to put this in capital letters: THERE IS NO GOVERNMENT-OPERATED STAND-ALONE SUPERVISED-CONSUMPTION ROOM IN RICHMOND.
The City of Richmond also said this in Traditional Chinese: 而溫哥華沿岸衛生局現已公開表示,不會在列治文設立監管注射站。這表示關於列治文是否設立監管注射站的討論已經結束。列治文不會設立監管注射站,市議會也不會再有進一步的討論。
For the B.C. Conservatives to imply that the B.C. NDP government has “flooded formerly safe communities with free hard drugs and put the lives of children and families at risk” is highly misleading.
Wat claims in her party’s news release that “so-called ‘safe supply’ has turned our streets into scenes of tragedy, and it’s our children who are innocent victims”.
In fact, the opposite is true: it’s the unsafe drug supply, brought on by mass production of synthetic opioids containing fentanyl and other substances, that is killing six people a day in B.C.
Wat is a skilled communicator—so skilled that she was hired by the B.C. NDP government to do communication work in the 1990s when Glen Clark was premier. Surely, she must know that Vancouver Coastal Health is not operating a stand-alone supervised consumption room in Richmond. If she had nothing to do with the B.C. Conservative news release, she should demand that the party remove her name from it immediately.
Last year, 26 Richmond residents died due to the toxic-drug crisis. More will die this year. Yet Vancouver Coastal Health refuses to open a stand-alone supervised consumption room because the B.C. NDP government is scared out of its wits by a potential backlash from placard-carrying protesters.
It’s worth noting that Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth announced in the B.C. legislature that there will be no supervised consumption site near Richmond Hospital. This is what motivated me to want to run as an independent candidate. It’s appalling that the public-safety minister, and not the health minister, would issue a pronouncement like this when the poisoned-drug crisis has been declared a health emergency.
But I digress. It breaks my heart every time I see a mother tweeting an image or a video of the child they lost due to an unsafe drug supply.
Voters deserve to hear the truth. There’s no room for Trumpism in B.C. politics. If you’re a middle-of-the road voter and you can’t stomach voting for a party led by David Eby—but you want to support someone who will tell the truth about public issues—vote independent in Richmond-Bridgeport. You can do the same in other constituencies if you’re as disgusted by the recent B.C. Conservative news release as I am. Thanks for reading this.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article did not acknowledge the existence of a the safe-use rooms at the two modular housing sites.