Vancouver Coastal Health quickly rejected a controversial city council proposal to explore the possibility of setting up a drug use facility at Richmond Hospital, but it turns out it was Premier David Eby's office that played a role in directing the health authority's response.
The motion, passed by Richmond City Council in February by a 7-2 vote, calls for city staff to work with VCH to study the feasibility of a supervised consumption site.
It has ignited a political storm involving politicians at both the city and state levels.
Richmond City Councilman Kash Heed was one of the councillors who tabled the motion.
“We followed due process, we looked at the science and we followed the expert opinion,” Heed said of the motion, which did not specifically call for the site to be built.
However, misinformation about the city council motion sparked two nights of heated debate and protests at Richmond City Hall.
Opposition BC Coalition and BC Conservative politicians used the opportunity to attack Eby's NDP government and its harm reduction policies.
A week before the City Hall debate on the motion, Dr. Meena Dawar, Richmond's medical health officer, wrote a letter to the mayor and city council.
“As the medical health officer for the City of Richmond, I am writing to express my support for the motion calling for overdose prevention services in the City of Richmond,” Dower wrote on Feb. 5.
Heed said despite its support and the passing of a motion at city council, VCH never discussed the issue with city staff.
Instead, in a statement to the media the day after the vote, VCH dismissed the idea of ​​a new supervised drug use facility in Richmond, saying that “a stand-alone supervised use facility is not the most appropriate service for people at risk of overdose in Richmond.”
It turned out that the Prime Minister's Office had directed its response through a state spokesman.
In an email obtained by CTV News, Preet Grewal, public relations specialist for the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, briefed VCH's communications staff.
“As we discussed via text earlier this morning, the Premier's Office has instructed us to issue a statement to VCH to quell some of the misinformation surrounding the proposed Richmond SCS. Below is a skeleton statement to reflect your/your team's input,” Grewal wrote.
The body of the email contained eight bullet points, but four were redacted by VCH's Information and Privacy Office in a copy of the email reviewed by CTV News.
Some of the unredacted bullet points in Grewal's email match almost exactly with parts of the statement VCH ultimately sent to CTV News the day after council's vote.
“Coastal Health had been working closely with the City of Richmond on this proposal,” Heed said of Coastal Health's change of course on the motion. “They were prepared to move forward with this proposal, but then they experienced interference from the Premier's office before the final vote.”
CTV News reached out to Grewal, of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and the Premier's Department, questioning why the highest level officials in the British Columbia government were involved in what were very preliminary discussions between Richmond city council and VCH.
The Prime Minister's Office did not respond to the request.
Grewal responded by forwarding the email to a VCH spokesperson who said they would respond.
“VCH has worked with the government to communicate Vancouver Coastal Health's position to the public to address some of the misinformation that has been circulating,” VCH said in an email, which also included most of the bullet points Grewal sent to the spokesperson in February.
At the time of the town hall debate, many protesters against the motion were under the mistaken impression that a regulated and safe supply of drugs to drug users was part of the motion.
Some of the fear-mongering around the proposal has come from politicians, including Pierre Poirierbre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
“Good Conservatives call on the Trudeau government to stop distributing taxpayer-funded drugs that fuel crime, chaos, drugs and disorder,” he said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), urging people to sign a petition opposing a possible new drug use facility in Richmond.
Now that it has come to light that Eby's office put pressure on VCH staff, Opposition BC MPs are accusing the premier of politicising the health-care system in an election year.
“It's never appropriate for the premier to dictate what health-care workers and others in the field are trying to do,” said Peter Milobar, provincial member of parliament for Kamloops North-Thompson.
As the argument raged, Richmond emergency responders were kept busy with drug-related calls, and shortly after CTV News interviewed, firefighters and paramedics were seen helping a man suffering an apparent drug overdose on the steps of City Hall.
