That Council direct Staff to prepare a report on options to regulate the use of controlled substances in public spaces including a summary of steps being proposed in other British Columbia Communities following Provincial decriminalization.
Earlier this year, we have had constant concerns and complaints from our citizens about open drug use and discarded drug paraphernalia in public places. So my motion is not about targeting people, it's about targeting behaviour which is concerning, very concerning to our citizens. We want people to feel comfortable walking on downtown streets or being in public parks and squares not have to be confronted with the open use of drugs or the resulting paraphernalia. As Councillor Perino just alluded to, we do not allow smoking in public places or drinking in parks and playgrounds, but now apparently it's okay to do drugs. And that just does not make sense to me. Drug consumption would be banned in places where it would negatively interfere with the public's use and enjoyment of such places, and that I think is important. A bylaw would not only protect our citizens and enhance the feeling of public safety, but it would also give enforcement officers the ability to talk to people and point them toward the necessary resources they need. I think this is what our citizens and our taxpaying public and our business community want and I think we need to try and take some action. So at this point I am not proposing a bylaw, though I may do so in future based on the information that I receive if this motion passes, but I am looking for options and advice on options.
Thank you, Your Worship. I appreciate the comments of other councillors, whatever their viewpoint. This is a huge topic, but we are not, I'm not aiming tonight to debate decriminalization or to debate the need for treatment centers or anything else, and this is not targeting homeless people. There are lots of persons with homes and expensive homes that now feel quite free, as they are allowed to, to use drugs and have their paraphernalia in public places like parks and playgrounds. And I don't think that's right. I don't think it's fair to our citizens or our children or our grandchildren. So yes, the province needs to do something and we need to pressure them to do something. The premier has admitted that this decriminalization has had unforeseen fallout and results, but we can't wait for them. All I'm asking is a staff report on what options do we have to help make our streets safer for our citizens. And we've had examples in past council meetings of citizens who've told stories about being afraid to go out of their own downtown condo with their children because of what they have to face in the street below. So what can we do about it at our level? Maybe, and Councillor Manley said he'd like to get Mr. LaBerge's opinion on this, so would I. Maybe he will come back as part of this report and tell us, you know what, Council, there's really nothing realistically you can do that's enforceable or would be effective. And if he tells us that, then fair enough, I'll accept it. Two earlier notices of motion this evening asking for staff reports to provide information so that we can have a fulsome debate and make good decisions. That's all I'm asking for tonight. And I'd be really disappointed if Council is not willing to agree to that request. And yes, Councillor Brown, you're quite right. I am not known for bringing forward motions and the only reason I have done so on this topic is because I sense from the community that this is so important to them. People want to know what are you doing, what can you do, what can you try and do. Give us some options, give us some answers. So that's my request for
Thank you. I'll be in support of this and thank you, Ms. Lovegrove. I would tell you to look at Portland where they will show you there has been a significant increase in drug use since decriminalization, so there are stats to support that. But I do have the same concerns that you can, I can't go after a baseball game and have a drink, but I can can do a shot, you know, smoke up some meth. Children are right beside, they're inhaling that as well. So I'm very concerned about that. We've seen kids go to hospital because of needle pricks. Some are going through the AIDS cocktail because they don't know the status of the infected needles. So I think we have to do something to also protect our most vulnerable being kids and older people that are no longer feeling safe to use our parks or even the drugs that were found in our school grounds the other day. Luckily that some child didn't digest. So I'm in support of this. This is just a report.
Thank you. I've heard everybody talk about a bylaw. We're not even anywhere near that. One of the options may come back and it may say we're gonna can be done. Like I think we're being premature by not allowing that report to come forward because there could be some very good ideas in that report. It may be that, you know what, we need to set up more safe consumption sites. That could be one of the options that comes back. It could be we're going to designate, you know, one of our parks someplace in town where that, you know what, people, you can go there and you can use there. So then at least people that in the rest of the community know, I'm not going to go to that park with my youth or my children because I don't want to be worried about that. I've been to the kids that have gone to there because they've ingested drugs, left on streets and stuff. And I don't want to do it again. And I don't think any of you that have children would want to have to go there because this council refused to even look at options that we could do to mitigate that. So I just think that people have jumped right away, we're going to have a by-law to prohibit it. That's not it. The request is to look at options. And an option might be, we're going to have designated spots, designated parks, it might even be designated areas of town where go ahead do what you want and I just think you know I voted for reports for many things I don't believe in just to get the report so that as Councillor Hemmond said we can have a proper
Hemmins thank you Your Worship I'm going to support this because I think we need to debate it and I think having an information report is going to allow us to debate it from the place of having all of the same information so we're not hearing about stats from Oregon and what Lady Smith might be doing I'd like staff to bring us a really good fulsome report that includes options that we can
Thanks, Your Worship. I almost want to support this because I think it might be Councillor Thorpe's first notice of motion since I've been on council with him and I love notice of motions but yeah but no I'm not going to be able to support this. I think there's a variety of reasons and if we did have that robust debate that would be the time and place I would want to bring that afford but I do know that we have bylaw 7628 that you know speaks to smoking but smoking of any particular type of substance cannabis tobacco and it has these very similar provisions it's based on the same same portion of the charter that the Kamloops bylaw and the one in Campbell River has now since been
What's the difference between before January 31st and after January 31st from on the street what it looks like? Absolutely nothing. Before January 31st, there was lots of people using a whole variety of spaces. And that has carried over after January 31st with decriminalization. I appreciate the search for answers. You know, I have young children. I, you know, I know that I had to go two hours early to the Bowen Picnic Park shelter for the birthday party last year and pick up a whole bunch of items that I didn't want kids to be playing near or find. You know, that's tough. That's tough. And, you know, it's tough, even tougher for the folks that I ran into there and I feel a lot of sympathy for them. Especially for all the reasons Councillor Gesselbrock highlighted around no places to go No places to get help if that's where they're at and that's where they can be met But the reality is the reason I just can't because going down a path That just isn't productive in the sense that it will have no material difference You know if we get the information report we have a good debate Maybe we decide to go council decides to go have a bylaw. It won't change the impacts of the folks on the street that are living a certain way and the challenges that they're facing that I wish no human being ever had to live and face and it won't change the fact of the parents that have to clean up at the parks and the business owners that have to clean the paraphernalia up in front of their business space which again that sucks too. Nobody signed up for that when they opened the business. So the reason I just can't support it is because even if there was a by-law in place tomorrow it would be no different than when these drugs were fully criminalized in terms of the usage on the street and the impacts it's having on the neighbourhood and communities.
Councillor Manley. Thank you, Your Worship. I appreciate the intent of this motion. the, you know, it's difficult to see people openly using drugs in our streets. And decriminalization without treatment facilities is a failure. You know, we're supposed to be having a four-pillared approach to drug addiction, and treatment is one of those pillars. And when people have to wait, you know, long periods of time to be able to get into treatment is just unacceptable. We've decriminalized drugs, but we do not have a safe supply. We have organized crime that are still regulating the supply of drugs. The supply is toxic. People have to engage in criminal activity to be able to, or, you know, find lots of money, blow through their savings, whatever it is, in order to support their habits. And the people that we're seeing on the street that are openly using drugs are homeless. And that means that we need to provide somewhere for them to use drugs. Because otherwise we're driving them into the bushes. And that is where they will die. And that is where the accelerants that they use for, you know, as they're using drugs, we'll set forest fires in Bowen Park and other parks in our community because we're driving them into the forest to do this. And it's not safe in there. Just this weekend, somebody, a very vulnerable person at the shelter, was pulverized with a rock and ended up in the hospital with 18 stitches because they were using in a place that wasn't public and safe. And we know the statistics that the majority of people that are dying are using at home. And decriminalization has not reduced stigma. It has not. Because people that don't want to be associated as drug users with the homeless are not going to be using in places where they can get the help that they need. home and those are generally men between the ages of 25 and 50 who have had injuries and become addicted to opioids through prescriptions. This is a public health issue and it's also about constitutional rights and we, you know, here I would ask him what his thoughts are right now I mean we had an email exchangeable people drinking openly in public in our community and I sent him an email about that why don't we why aren't they rounded up like we round up people on bathtub days and put them in the drunk tank and if you read the response it was the response I was expecting because they are homeless people because most of them are indigenous indigenous and because there's the Gladue reference that we have to be thinking about, and the fact that people can't pay fines and that we've got to stop pushing people around.
Councillor Manley. I'm just going to agree with Councillor Eastmere. This is a motion for options to regulate, which is exactly that, bylaws. And I'm not happy seeing open drug use in our community. I am not happy with this. We hear from a lot of people that are upset about this, and some of those emails, they just want people to go away and die. Stop feeding them, stop giving them water, stop giving them shelter, let them deal with the consequences of their addiction, and they'll either die or change their ways. And we don't see enough people like Nurse Lovegrove here speaking for the other side of this. And that is the human cost of families, family members of people who are dying. So, you know, I'm not happy with what I'm seeing. If this was a motion that had options for mitigating and places, safe places for people to use and places for people to direct, that by-law could direct people to, I'm not sure which park and which neighbourhood would be happy about this, then I could support it. But I can't support it with the wording that it has right now. Thank you.
very little is working, very little will work. Obviously, you can't find somebody. I agree with all of that. The biggest point with this for me is that by doing a report, we make it public. And when we make it public, I'm hoping that the media will take it to the province and say, what are you going to do? And if Campbell River does it, and Kamloops does it, and Victoria does it, whatever cities do motion I'm hoping that eventually the province will say okay we need to change our direction and do more because what they're doing now isn't working we have to do more but by doing nothing we are doing absolutely nothing so for me I have to vote in favor even though I know the chances are very slim as to how we could put this forward even if we did thank you thank you Council Brown
a lot about from community members and we're witnessing like open drug use in ways that I've personally not witnessed and it is it's really disturbing for sure and I just like we need the province to step up and make to treat this crisis like the crisis that it is and they've thrown us in the deep end with no water wings right now with with you know decriminalization and no safe supply and you know the treatment beds they're announcing are like 10 at a time Like, it's just, it's not okay. So, I really want to turn this back on the province and say, what are you going to do to make this tenable for BC municipalities? And I just, I don't think this is the right time for Nanaimo to go out on its own and try to make some kind of piecemeal bylaw to address this, because all it's going to do is push people further out of the public eye, and as Councillor Manley said, that's when they die. numbers are already untenable and really what sealed it for me was our director of bylaw services Dave LaBerge's email on Friday and right in it he says enforcement of provincial regulations against public intoxication and alcohol consumption is not effective in deterring unhoused substance addicted persons from repeating similar behavior nor does incarceration or fines deter habitual drunkenness or alcohol addiction and you know by extension drug use. So our own director of bylaw services is saying this isn't going to work because the people who are using in public, they have nowhere else to go. So I just, I can't see this being a good use of staff time right now and I just, I can't, I don't want us walking
Councillor Eastry. Thank you so yeah I just I feel like it's Councillor Armstrong raised the fact that we seem to have jumped to bylaws on this, and I think that it's natural that we did that because the word regulate is in there, and that means rules. So like if the motion read something like mitigate the use of controlled substances, and then we can get super creative about like designated areas in town, like forgive me, but I really don't feel like we're reading this motion wrong. This is sending us in the direction of a by-law because of the word regulate. So if we wanted to talk about changing the language in this so that it was about looking at creative options to provide safe places for people to use drugs, that would be a different motion. But this motion is a no for me.
I think we can all agree that nobody's happy with the current situation. I, for one, you know, am by alcohol. I have never used drugs of any kind illicit in my life and have no intention of doing so. I frankly don't like being around the company of people who do. I don't enjoy it at all, so I want everyone to know where I start from in terms of my attitude. What I have heard tonight in Councillor Thorpe's motion is the cry of this community. We did not ask for mental health institutions to be closed. We did not ask senior governments to stop building housing. We did not ask senior governments to deregulate or decriminalize the taking of drugs, which with great respect may be used for recreational purposes, but ultimately are unhealthy in any way, shape, or form for public human consumption, or private human consumption, because we all know now from statistics that the people who are dying of overdoses are doing so generally in sheltered situations in their own homes, and yes, their workers and all of that. What I hear from Councillor Thorpe tonight is something I will happily support. Not because, frankly, I believe we will have the legal authority to do so. free legal opinion tonight on this. The province and a court case, whoever, will decide that we have no ability to regulate the use of controlled substances in public spaces. And I suspect a staff report may come back, potentially with a legal opinion that will tell us that as well. But I am not about to sit back in this community and watch the public consumption of drugs, the horrors that exist in our street, without at least picking up a stone to throw against senior government's window. and get some attention. Now, I know it's not going to work necessarily, but I am not going to sit back and wait for something good to happen and drift down from Victoria or Ottawa that will solve the social crisis, the human crisis of our times. I'm willing to pick up the stone like Councillor Thorpe and chuck it, and it'll get some attention. And as Councillor Perino pointed out, if we chuck enough rocks, maybe it'll really get some attention. And I'm sorry that we've been reduced to this it is. So I, for one, want some attention drawn to this, and I am going to vote for Councillor Thorpe's motion for that reason. Not because I think it will be effective, not because I think staff are going to tell us we'll be able to regulate it, not because I believe for a moment that fining people who live in poverty on the streets will change their behavior as a result. I acknowledge all of that, but I am not prepared to sit back as a community and just wait for something to happen. Let's chuck the first rock. I'm with Councillor Thorpe on this,