Overdose Prevention Policy Framework (Motion 14)

And that's what the intention of this motion is. It is not to, well, I'm out of time, but I want to be clear what the intention is here. Thanks, Counselor. Do we have a seconder for this motion? Second by Councillor Meiszner. All right, so we will now hear from the registered speaker for this motion. So again, our speakers should state whether they are in support or in opposition of the recommendations and may only speak once. I will also ask speakers if they are residents of Vancouver, if it is not noted on the speaker's list. Our first registered speaker is Vincent Kong.

Hi, hello. Yeah, we can hear you, Vincent. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council. My name is Vincent Kwan. I'm the Executive Director of the Strathcona Business Improvement Association. I support the direction of this motion because overdose prevention and harm reduction services are an important part of the broader response to the toxic drug crisis. That is also precisely why we need to get the implementation right. The motion begins to establish clear expectation around cleanliness, public order, operating plans, monitoring, and enforcement. If overdose prevention and harm reduction services are essential healthcare services, they should be managed with the same discipline, resources, and duty of care that we'd expect from every other essential public service.

Success is not simply opening a service. Success is delivering quality care while maintaining confidence among clients, neighboring residents, businesses, and the surrounding community. For this framework to work, there must be a clear chain of accountability across the entire system, from the operator to the city, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the province. The community should not be left trying to determine which institution is responsible when problems arise.

It should be clear when the operator must respond, when the city must monitor or enforce and when VCH or the province must become involved because additional authority funding or changes to the service model are required. That is where the good neighbor agreement becomes important. Although the agreement is between the operator and the city, it should also provide the surrounding community with a clear way to raise concerns and understand what happens next. And properly, the good neighbor agreement becomes a community-facing connection to the broader accountability framework. It should help ensure that concerns are assessed, recurring problems are recognized, unresolved issues are escalated, and outcomes are reported back. The community has an important role in providing honest and timely information as well about what is happening around the operation. While the responsibility for assessment, corrective action, and enforcement remains with the appropriate public institutions. The effective business improvement areas can

also help connect those two sides.

As place-based organizations working closely with both its members and the city, BIAs can help ensure that agreement reflects actual conditions on the ground, recognizes recurring patterns, and gives community a practical way to reach the institutions responsible for acting. For that reason, we ask Council to ensure that the affected BIAs are formally consulted and invited to help shape the good neighbor agreement before it is finalized. That consultation should happen early, not after the agreement has already been written, so that the BIs can help shape how concerns are raised, the processes involved, recurring problems, how recurring problems are recognized, and resolve issues brought to the right authority. Ultimately, the measure of a good neighbor agreement is not written... Thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right. Speaker number two is Joshua Davidson.

Good evening, Chair. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Joshua Davidson. I'm the Director of Operations at Downtown Vancouver BIA, also known as Downtown Van. I'm also a resident of Vancouver. Overall, Downtown Van is prepared to support this motion. However, we have outlined four recommendations for consideration that we believe would strengthen the framework. For many years, Downtown Ban has been advocating for greater accountability, consistency and transparency around the plans and operations of overdose prevention and harm reduction facilities. This motion moves us in the right direction. We recognise that the toxic drug crisis remains one of the most significant public health challenges facing our city. Harm reduction services save lives and are an important part of our health system. At the same time, we hear almost every day from businesses, employees, residents and visitors about the impacts that occur when facilities like these are not supported by clear operational standards and effective management of the surrounding public realm. What we appreciate about this motion is that it begins to establish expectations around licensing, operating plans, cleanliness, reporting, good neighbour agreements and community accountability. Therefore, should staff develop this framework, we encourage council to ensure that it includes the addition of the four following elements. First, meaningful consultation before facilities are approved. Engagement needs to happen early and it should include business improvement associations, local businesses, residents and other affected stakeholders. Second, measurable operating standards with clear consequences when operators do not meet them. Expectations should be transparent and consistently enforced. Third, good neighbor agreements should be developed with the support of business improvement associations and the surrounding businesses, and they should include clear response times, complaint resolution processes, and ongoing communication. And finally, ensure that any locational criteria give appropriate consideration to neighborhood context, cumulative impacts, and the unique role of key commercial districts, which includes the Granville Entertainment District. Downtown Vance's position has always been that these conversations are not about choosing between compassion or accountability, they require both.

When these services are properly located, appropriately resourced and well managed, they can improve health outcomes while reducing impacts on surrounding neighbourhoods. A clear regulatory framework provides greater certainty for operators, businesses, residents and the community, while helping restore confidence in how these services are planned and managed. We thank Councillor Fry for bringing this motion forward, and if Council adopts these four recommendations that I've outlined today, Downtown Band is pleased to support the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, speaker number three is Stephanie Smith. Hi, good evening. I'm also calling to support this motion. It's not surprising that many Vancouverites have become opposed to any safer consumption sites or OAT services in their communities. We've had a bad run of operators opening sites that aren't structurally adequate for client needs and which aren't adequately resourced. Then when trouble happens in the community around the site, operators shrug their shoulders and say that what happens outside isn't their problem. This is a dynamic that we see taking place over and over again in Vancouver. Critical services for at-risk people are inadequately managed. There are neighborhood impacts, and everyone is left to fight with one another while the people responsible, the funders and operators of the sites, including government, either steer clear or exploit the fallout. Eliminating these services will cause people to die. Let's not avoid that. And I am worried that there's an alarming cohort mainly but not entirely of online bots and trolls that say that they want drug users to die. There are people stoking that hatred at all levels of government. But I don't think that community members who don't want to deal with crime and nuisance around safe consumption sites want people to die. I think that mainly people want folks to get help. We need better service delivery models. People need to be able to get off the street. They also need immediate access to support services, including recovery oriented services. But we also need to do our best to make sure that people don't die. This is a route forward because at its heart, it's an accountability framework for everyone involved. There's accountability for the city, which is currently on a collision course with the federal government that we can afford. There's accountability for the province, for the health authority, for the operators, and for folks using the sites too. I think it's past time for everyone to come to the table to ensure that folks don't die and to ensure that service delivery models respect community needs. I don't think it's impossible, and I think it's incumbent on all of us to try. Thanks. Thank you. All right. So this is the end of the speaker's list. Thanks, everyone, for speaking to council or standing committee.

Committee members, is there any discussion? I saw Councillor Fry. Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to add a couple of comments I didn't have time to do. And number one is, as council will know, I've sat on the UBCM's Health and Social Development Committee for... number of years. And when the province came with decriminalization and we had the conversations at UBCM about what they were planning to rule out with decrim, they failed to adequately engage with local governments and with our understanding of how these kind of services and these kind of opportunities could work. And in our local governments and within the context of local communities. And what they failed to consider was things like supervised consumption sites and treatment facilities and overdose prevention sites and the things that complement and how we could make it work. And I think that's where we see this sort of policy gap. I also want to reflect that many years ago I had a conversation with Mark Townsend. Mark Townsend and his partner Liz Evans were the founders of the Portland Hotel Society and they opened the first supervised consumption site Insight on Hastings Street. And Mark, when they opened it up, they had, was very, quite stunning, very nice architecture, clean, modern, good branding, all this kind of stuff. And Mark told me, you know, he's like, if we want these facilities to be a success, they need to look good. They need to be a positive contribution to the community. They need to be clean and well-run. They need to be not a burden on community so that other people won't point to it and say, I don't want that in my community because we need these in communities. We need to meet people where they're at. We need to save lives. We need to get people. the help that they need, the treatment that they need, the safe consumption that they need, and work on solutions. And this, you know, I'm hoping is a way forward to strike that balance and meet the needs of folks who have substance use disorder and who are incredibly vulnerable, but also meet the needs of the community and surrounding, and we can have it all. And I see Councillor Meiszner on the queue, so I'll let him jump on. Okay, thank you. Councillor Meiszner.

Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Frye. Thanks, Chair. Thanks to all the speakers in particular, our two BIA representatives who called in tonight on obviously this very important issue. And I know you've been very engaged on it and we've had many conversations with you over the past few years to try to work through some of the issues that have come up around these sites. First, I just want to state that Councillor Frye and I agree that bylaw tools are needed. to help regulate these ops sites in our city but where we differ is that i don't believe that the language and the motion is robust enough and i think it needs strengthening to address the issues that we're seeing and have seen surrounding the locations of these sites I strongly believe there's a need for operating standards developed by the city, not just relying on the standards from the province. Accountability, real consultation, and mechanisms to address issues. And we heard that from our speakers this evening from the BIAs. So I have submitted an amendment.

Chair, if you could please take us to amendment Q. Okay, thanks. Seconded by Councillor Kerbion. Please add yourself there, Councillor Meiszner. Okay, please go ahead. Thank you. So as councillors are aware, and as I just mentioned, challenges surrounding the operation of previous overdose prevention sites in downtown Vancouver are well documented. Council, city staff, community organizations, residents, and businesses have spent many years and many hours working to address the impacts that have all too often accompanied these sites. These include street disorder, encampments on surrounding sidewalks, public drug use, significant increases in police, fire, and ambulance calls, and ongoing concerns around public safety and neighborhood livability. The provincial operating standards introduced in June of 2025 and referenced in the original motion were intended to improve accountability, but they have not gone far enough. Despite these standards, residents, small businesses, and other neighbors in communities across B.C., continue to raise legitimate concerns about the impacts surrounding these sites. Just as importantly, the provincial framework is not designed for a dense urban environment like Vancouver. It's a one-size-fits-all policy. So where provincial standards fall short, I strongly believe the city has a responsibility to establish our own expectations within our jurisdiction. We need meaningful accountability for operators while also recognizing that substance use and addiction is fundamentally a healthcare issue. and that people struggling with addiction deserve access to compassionate care. I will continue advocating to the province to significantly expand treatment and recovery options, including mandatory care where appropriate. And at the same time, this motion should better address the realities experienced by surrounding communities in our city. Our goals should be to ensure that overdose prevention sites can continue to provide essential health services while minimizing negative impacts on the neighborhoods in which they operate. And that means establishing clear considerations for things like proximity to schools, community centers, parks, hotels, residential areas, and other sensitive locations. This also means genuine consultation with residents, businesses, BIAs, and other stakeholders before decisions are made. Communities should not be learning about a new site only after a lease has been signed or in some cases after the site is already moving forward and that's what we saw recently at Helmcken and Hornby and that's why I supported intervention by the city on that proposed location. There must be real accountability, robust operating and neighbourhood management plans, adequate funding to maintain the public realm as mentioned by one of our speakers and I wholeheartedly agree. timely responses when issues arise, and transparent reporting so council and the public can evaluate outcomes. These amendments are intended to strengthen the motion by ensuring that overdose prevention sites can deliver the critical health services while also protecting neighborhood safety, maintaining public confidence, and ensuring operators are accountable to the communities they serve. So that's what these amendments are intended to accomplish to strengthen this motion, and I hope council will support them.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Waugh.

yeah thanks just reading over these amendments um i think um it changes um the original spirit makes it a lot a lot more stringent, which I understand is the spirit from the movers of the amendment's words just now. So, I mean, I had issues with the motion already, and I think this kind of really... kind of legitimizes my fears around really weaponizing a lot of this rhetoric around health. this is a health issue and that, you know, this would be duplication. A lot of what Vancouver Coastal Health does is involved already in a lot of these things in terms of, you know, keeping... a lot of these places are safe and whatnot. So I really worry that this will make it a lot more difficult to have new overdose prevention sites and that Yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm struggling to find the words. But yeah, I definitely think this makes it more difficult to have. I support, you know, I support consultation. I support operational standards. I support neighborhood accountability. But as I understand it, that's what Vancouver Coastal Health does already. I know some might disagree with that. I know there could be better communication. And yeah, so I don't think I can support the amendment. Thanks. Thanks. Councillor Fry. Yeah. You know, I didn't mention this in the intro, but I did work fairly extensively with experts on the series of recommendations. And as I read this, and I appreciate Councillor Meiszner's... participation and agreeing that this is a health care issue. I do worry that this is too prescriptive and too restrictive. Certainly when we start talking about the areas that, you know, proximity to things like hotels and residential uses becomes increasingly complicated. What does that even look like? And when we start talking about aspects of... unlawful activity uh and adjacency and adjacent streets and surrounding neighborhoods that becomes a very very very broad net and and and basically indistinguishable from the actual operations there's no way to quantify what neighborhood impacts are resulting um indeed i was at the location of the

what was then proposed overdose prevention site. And there's plenty of activity in the immediate vicinity, and that overdose prevention site's not there. So therefore, it is impossible to quantify what those impacts of a neighborhood are by virtue of an overdose when there's already impacts. So I think that this amendment, as well-intentioned it is, does not make this practical. Now, I will also frame that, though, on a broader sense, this is all a report back for staff, and I think that staff, when doing this work, will probably report back that it's nigh on impossible to quantify the performance indicators demonstrating adverse effects in surrounding neighborhoods. That's not a thing that would possibly be indicated by... An OPS, I don't think staff would report back in support of and with anything that could support that. We do have to recognize that in crafting the original motion, a lot of these bylaw considerations were using the actual framework that we have existing for our licensing bylaw, the actual ability for us to do things. These are things that we don't have the ability to do. And I do think we'll put a chill on the opportunity to save lives. So I don't support the amendment. Okay, thanks. Councillor Maloney? Yeah, I am concerned about how broad this direction would be should the amendment be passed. I think that it will create barriers. that are unable to be overcome in offering harm reduction services and that this could set off a chain reaction in other municipalities even more than at the moment. I'm really worried that this would make it more challenging for independent organisations to run OPSs and even Vancouver Coastal Health would struggle to meet these standards in an OPS, they operated directly. It's just very broad language. So I'm very concerned about the decisions that have been made about overdose prevention sites. They affect me personally. I live close to the site of the OPS that didn't go ahead and I can tell you that it hasn't eliminated poverty and it hasn't eliminated homelessness and it hasn't eliminated street disorder. There's no OPS there and all those things still exist except that there is open drug taking on the street whereas people could have been accommodated and Harm could have been avoided and people could have had access to rapid healthcare that they need instead of my teenage children wandering around town being confronted by the sight of people in need of medical attention having to wait around for it where it would be on hand if that facility was available.

There are two sides to the story. I think that we need to not interfere with the ability of Vancouver Coastal Health and other health authorities and health providers in setting up overdose prevention sites so that visitors and residents of Vancouver And people who are vulnerable and homeless and drug users have as much help as they can get to deal with this terrible problem that our city faces. So I'll be voting against this amendment.

Thanks. Councillor Clarkson.

Thanks, Chair. I want just to thank Councillor Beisner for the amendment that I intended to support. Cities and towns in British Columbia and across Canada are all struggling with the challenges of the mental health and addictions challenges. But at the same time, local governments are often left with the responsibility of having to address them in many different ways and including through public safety requirements, engineering requirements, obviously fire and rescue services, and we are not seeing a commensurate response from the provincial government nor the health authority to really respond seriously to the scale of challenges that communities are facing. you know, have seen the reaction to the 900 Helmken situation from community members, from local businesses, all of who are desperate to try and make sure that senior levels of government are put in a framework and plans to make sure to respond with immediacy. and comprehensively with the impacts of open drug use and street disorder. And so I think it really behooves us at this time for our city to step forward and essentially say that we need to raise the bar

and set the standard. And if it's Vancouver that does that, then I'm fine with that. I think that the work that I do working with other mayors at the BC Urban Mayors Caucus, where there is a challenge faced by many urban centers across British Columbia, whether it's Kamloops, Victoria, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Prince George, I can go on. All communities are facing the similar challenges and are left without real tools to deal with it. So the addition of the amendment in this motion, I think, takes it to a level that I think brings me comfort. uh and requires us to to to sit down and get serious with our partners uh to ensure that we can actually address um again the scale of the challenge that we're facing right now and so uh with that i plan to support the motion thank you amendment thank you counselor meisner Yeah, thank you. I'm disappointed to hear my colleagues are not willing to support what is really a robust framework for the city around overdose prevention sites. That is disappointing given all the feedback and response we've heard from the community around the challenges we've had with previous sites. We've had three previous sites that have been shut down due to various issues around street disorder and open drug use. So I think that this is the right approach to ensure that these services are planned and located and managed in a way that is... that is transparent, that's evidence-based, and that is accountable to the surrounding neighbourhoods, and that when issues arise, we can address them. So I obviously am supporting the amendment that I brought forward, and I hope that my councillor colleagues will support it as well. This is about doing right by people who are struggling and also doing right by the communities in which our Vancouverites live. Thanks. Thanks. Councillor Corbett. Yeah, it's getting late, so I might be quite direct in this. And I'll just say that, yes, it's a health issue. We need to look out for the individual health of people that are struggling. We also need to look out for health of our neighborhoods. And quite frankly, the health authorities and Coastal Health have that has not been a priority for them at all. And I sat through that public hearing. Back for Seymour, it was clear that the space was undersized and insufficient. And when asked by, you know, asking both Coastal Health and then operator Rain City if they would take some measurements, or take some measures, I should say, to be mindful of the impact kind of immediately outside in the public realm, which wasn't an onerous ask, I didn't think, at all at the time. The answer is clearly, definitively no, and it was one of the most egregious things I've ever seen happen at a city meeting because it required a two-thirds vote.

And I remember this crystal clear that the hearing went on. And then overnight, we had, I think, unprecedented chair of BC Housing and other folks coming down. And then the hearing went on overnight. And when we came in the next day, lo and behold, somehow the threshold had changed. And instead of asking for below market lease, because it was in a city space. They said, oh, yeah, we'll just pay market. And then that changed the voting threshold to a simple majority of council. And at the time, because they could tell they didn't have the votes and then they didn't have to have any accountability for impact. And that was like just calling it out very clearly, like regardless of your perspective on this issue, that those are the facts of what happened. And that showed a complete disregard. for pushing things through without consideration for the neighborhood. And then we fast forward. Here we are at another term, and we have assurances that we're going to, in terms of hopefully learning from that experience and needing to keep social license so that we can provide the necessary medical support and care to people and that we would engage with people. And then we have a hotel that is opening up immediately across from that doesn't know about anything about it until the day before. And ongoing many residents and local businesses that said, oh, yeah, we're going to have consultation that haven't had any. And so, you know, again, color me skeptical. I don't have faith, but I don't. And so I think that we need to put some expectations in place to say we will welcome these things if they are well run. Council Frye, I think it was, used the analogy earlier about marijuana stores. Shouldn't be different in terms of, you know, something that arguably puts folks in harm's way as well. And seniors and other folks or, you know, parents and kids shouldn't be different than how we try to look at other substances. You know, we have things on liquor stores. We really try to put a balance in... place with our frameworks that provide the ability for different things to operate, but that respect that we have to have a social fabric in the city that works together. If you get complete, I think we're beyond compassion fatigue into... absolute frustration something is not right it just isn't and the pendulum has really swung and so people want to know that it's not going to go up next to their kids school or a senior center or that you know there's going to be genuine efforts to try to be good neighbors together and that's really what this is so if it seems very explicit in the instruction. I think it's born out of experience, to be honest, and a sense of responsibility that we can support these things in the city if there is also a willingness to work with us so that they can be successful for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Frye? Yeah, just to add, I mean, this is a fairly comprehensive, extensive amendment that we're only just seeing for the first time.

I'm only just seeing for the first time. So I think the challenge with this is the original motion was really to establish some very clear criteria to the operating of a specific business, as we would do for any business. This... expands the scope so expansively that it will be virtually impossible. When we talk about adjacent neighborhoods and neighborhood impacts and try to pin that on the application of one business or one facility is nigh on impossible. And when we talk about, I mean, the irony that one of the, in H, it talks about proximity to new supportive housing when this very same council has moved to ban new supportive housing. I'm just not sure if this is designed to just stop the availability of health services altogether, because I want to be clear that the entire intention of this original motion was to recognize that we have a responsibility, indeed, a charter guaranteed right to health and safety. that says that we can't deny health facilities. We cannot use these extensive tools to deny health facilities, but we can certainly ensure to some degree that the facility itself is run well. And the facility itself can't be responsible for the larger neighborhood. That's not how these things work. We can certainly ensure that it is run well, and that was the work that was put into this. what is being created with this amendment is an impossibility. And that's the challenge. I appreciate that we are all looking for a good solution, a solution that works with communities and that respects how we can all live together and like businesses can thrive and people will be safe and lives will be saved. But I'm just afraid that this will really prevent us from making it work and we'll just end up in a lawsuit. And that was the entire intention of trying to get us ahead of a Supreme Court challenge on charter rights because we're blocking access to health services. I feel that this amendment effectively does block access to health services, and that's why I can't support it. Thank you. Counselor Orr. Yes. Thanks. Yeah, I love that we were talking about marijuana and alcohol in the same breath. These two drugs are legal and are not poisoned. We can't be talking about these two things at the same time when we have drugs with a cocktail of benzos, horse tranquilizers, xylosine, fentanyl, carfentanil, any other analogs. This is not the same thing. And that's the whole point, is that if these drugs were regulated and safe, we wouldn't probably need these. People could use in their homes, like people drink and smoke marijuana in their homes, or in bars, bars that line Granville Street, safe consumption sites that line Granville Street, which still sees tons of street disorder, as we have seen in the past few weeks at FIFA.

with tons of arrests. There's a video that's circulating online, a 15-minute brawl. Like, the idea that one site can create this kind of disorder while these bars on Granville Street and all over the city create that exact same disorder that we're talking about. This is so frustrating. I just don't see how you can't see that logic here. And people overdosing every day on Granville Street. You may not think it's an overdose, but people vomiting, people being over-served alcohol is an overdose. People are overdosing every day on Granville Street and across the city. But it's okay because it's a regulated drug. because of a different drug, because it's opiates or cocaine or whatever, stimulants or whatever other drug that is shunned by society, that this will result now in people increasing stigma, increasing overdoses. We've seen overdoses are down lately. They're down because these things work. And I'm so frustrated that this motion was brought forward in the first place because this is exactly what we feared. And I can't support this. And I'm sorry. Thanks, Counselor. Counselor Meisner. I just want to be clear and I understand that this is a sensitive and obviously sensitive issue. This is really about ensuring that when we have these sites located in our city, that they can coexist in the neighborhood, that there are mechanisms to address issues, that there is robust community consultation before the sites are cited, that they have the adequate resources that they need, that... that they can be managed effectively and that people can get the help that they need. This is not about preventing these sites. This is about putting in a framework municipally to help ensure good outcomes for both the people that use the sites and the neighbourhoods. I'm not opposed to these sites. I want them to be run in a way that helps people and also does not cause issues in the surrounding community. And I think that's possible, and I think that's possible through a framework like this, and that's why I moved this amendment. So I just want to be clear on that. Thanks. Thank you. All right, so seeing no one else on the queue, so I'm going to take everyone to the voting panel. So we're going to vote for Councillor Meiszner's amendment. Councillor, please register your vote.

Okay. And Councillor Orr?

Okay, so the amendment passed with Councillor Fry, Councillor Orr, Councillor Maloney in opposition.

Can we project the voting results?

Okay. Okay, so going back to the main queue. Councillor Meiszner? Yeah, I just want to add quickly one more thing. One of my colleagues mentioned concerns around some of these things maybe not being, I guess, within our jurisdiction or legally possible. That's what we will determine in the report back. That's really what the amendment is directing. It's a report back to council with options around these proposed concerns. these proposed jurisdictional regulations that the city is proposing. So we will get that information. Thanks. Thanks. Councillor Maloney. No, I'm done. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Seeing no one else on the queue. So again, let's take everyone to the voting panel. We are voting for the motion as amended. Council, please register your vote.

Chair, Councillor Costner, just for the clerk's purposes, the voting results were not displayed on the screen. Thank you. Oh, it's not? Okay, so, yeah, we're going to make sure we display the voting results this time.

Okay, Councillor Kirby, okay. All right, so the motion as amended passed with Councillor Frye, Councillor Ward, Councillor Maloney in opposition. Okay.

let's display the voting results the vote is ended it's just not streaming correctly

Okay. Can we fix that easily?