Nanaimo-Lantzville candidates spoke to a near-capacity crowd at Wellington Secondary School on Wednesday evening on a range of questions submitted before the event.
Organized by the Regional District of Nanaimo and the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District, the debate was the first one featuring candidates from all three parties and presented the opportunity for local residents, and of course partisan supporters, to hear the perspectives of people running to be the first MLA for the newly created riding, which covers northern parts of the City of Nanaimo and Lantzville.
BC NDP candidate and corporate lawyer George Anderson, Conservative Party of BC candidate and former NDP MLA Gwen O’Mahony, BC Green Party candidate and restorative justice mediator Lia Versaevel answered questions previously submitted to the moderators before the event. Each candidate was permitted a total of two one-minute rebuttals that they could choose to use at any time during the debate.
A recording of the forum can be found on YouTube. A debate featuring Nanaimo-Gabriola Island candidates was held the next day and is also available to watch online.
Addictions treatment
The most vibrant exchange of the night centered around questions of health care and addictions in the city.
Conservative Party of BC candidate Gwen O’Mahony spoke about how her family has “wrestled with addiction,” and that the province was in a “complete crisis when it comes to health care, a crisis in affordability, and a crisis with drug addiction and mental health support.”
O’Mahony said that the province needs to transition to a “treatment-based approach” to addictions. “Right now the province is engaged in so-called harm reduction, and that harm reduction is actually causing more harm to people and to communities and to family members,” she told the crowd, adding that the focus needs to be on building new treatment centres and encouraging people to enter treatment.
The province’s 10-year strategy for mental health and addictions, published in 2019, includes four pillars: Wellness promotion and prevention; Seamless and integrated care; Equitable access to culturally safe and effective care; and Indigenous health and wellness. Harm reduction is one part of that strategy, which also includes increased access to evidence-based addiction care, connecting people to treatment and support for ongoing recovery.
She said that her nephew “really wrestled with addiction, and he went through detox at the hospital, and there was a three-week wait before he could go from detox into treatment.”
“We have to make sure that there is a seamless movement from detox to treatment,” she added. “And then when the person comes out of treatment, that they aren’t put back in the same communities where there’s a lot of drug use.”
BC NDP candidate George Anderson spoke about losing a friend who struggled with addictions, choking up briefly before continuing. “He was 30 years old… and it was devastating. But the fact is that we need to be doing something, and we need to be doing something now.”
Anderson said the government has opened 650 new treatment spaces in the province since 2017, including 10 spaces at the public-private Edgemont Health Network centre in Nanaimo, formerly known as Edgewood, which he called “a world-renowned treatment facility.”
Anderson attacked O’Mahony for using the phrase “so-called harm reduction,” and attacked Conservative Leader John Rustad for promising to close overdose prevention sites and safe supply programs.
O’Mahony fired back that “the province has fumbled the drug addiction crisis” and said that having 25 detox beds in central Vancouver Island was “a very poor service, it’s not even worth giving yourself a pat on the back for.”
According to the Island Health website there are 10 beds at Clearview Medical Detox in Nanaimo, and the province announced in March that another six detox beds will open in Campbell River. Cedars Recovery in Cobble Hill does not have dedicated detox beds, but its website says medical detox is part of its program and that patients “transition directly into our extensive treatment program.” Cedars Recovery has a total of 15 publicly-funded treatment beds.
Anderson replied that Rustad and the Conservatives can’t be trusted as the party announced it would close overdose prevention sites and “then 10 days ago, he says ‘thank god that we have overdose prevention sites,’” referring to conflicting statements made by Rustad and his candidates on this file. Rustad pledged to convert all OPS into recovery intake sites during the Oct. 2 CKNW leaders debate.
“You can’t trust them,” he said. “One day, they’ll say one thing. The next day, they’re going to say the other. Their positions are as stable as a weather vane in the middle of a hurricane.”
BC Green Party candidate Lia Versaevel said that the root causes of addiction need to be addressed.
“Forcing people into treatment is not the answer,” she said. “Involuntary care does not fix the problem. People need to want to escape addiction. People need mental health services, and these must be covered by our medical services plan.”
Health care
Versaevel laid out the Green’s plan for a network of primary care clinics throughout the province.
“We need to bring these hubs to local communities where all kinds of health-care services, including labs, counseling services, dieticians and people who will work with people at every stage of their life, whether they are already healthy and maintaining their health, or whether they are facing critical medical challenges,” she said.
Anderson touted NDP investments in health care including new seats for medical students at the University of British Columbia, a new medical school in Surrey, new intensive care and high-acuity care units at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, 300 long-term care beds in Lantzville, a new Urgent and Primary Care Centre in the riding and the new promise by NDP Leader David Eby for a new patient tower at the hospital.
A woman in the front row sneezed near the end of Anderson’s remarks, and he paused briefly to say “bless you” prompting O’Mahony to quip “I think she’s allergic to dishonesty.”
O’Mahony said that the reason that the new patient tower was promised by the NDP was that “we are very close in the polls” and that “ the NDP had no desire to build the hospital tower, and still hasn’t promised a [cardiac] cath lab.”
She then outlined the Conservative’s “patients first” plan for a single payer system that would “expand through public and non-government facilities so we can reduce the wait times.”
Anderson replied that “you may have missed a key word that she said there, ‘public and non-governmental services.’ What are we talking about there? Privatizing our public health care here in British Columbia, that’s what they’re talking about.”
Read more about what candidates in Nanaimo said about health care.
Crime and Public Safety
“You go to downtown Nanaimo and people don’t feel safe,” Anderson said in response to a community question about crime and public safety, adding that his sister “doesn’t feel safe walking through parts of our community now.”
He then said that 250 new police officers have been hired in British Columbia and the new Nanaimo Correctional Centre will “ensure that repeat offenders are staying in prison.” He said that the NDP are doing “more work with respect to involuntary care” for people with traumatic brain injuries.
“When you see people who are laying face down on the street, they need additional help,” he said. “That’s why we’ve announced new secure facilities, with the first one opening in Maple Ridge and new facilities across British Columbia and in the time thereafter.”
He also says the NDP is taking on organized crime, including seizing the local clubhouse by the Hell’s Angels through the civil forfeiture law.
O’Mahony spoke about a recent arrest near an Overdose Prevention Site (OPS).
“My video highlighted a very serious bust that occurred at a safe injection site,” she said, referring to a campaign video where she talks about the incident. “These people were employees selling drugs’ she said. “The woman who was arrested had a loaded pistol in her backpack. I wasn’t just doing it for the likes. I’m pointing out the fact that we have serious problems in our community and across B.C. and this happened on the NDP’s watch.”
The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), which operates the OPS in downtown Nanaimo, told Nanaimo News Now that people arrested had no role at the OPS when they were arrested and were never CMHA employees. The RCMP has not verified where the arrests took place or exactly where the firearms were seized.
Versaevel talked about her time working as a probation officer in a “juvenile jail” and said that first responders need more support and funding but questions if people who feel unsafe are “terrorized by false arguments about how scary these people are.” She added that people with mental health issues are more of a threat to themselves than others.
She also took a shot at O’Mahony for the videos she made both on the OPS and an earlier video about a vending machine for harm-reduction supplies — naloxone, drug-testing kits and pipes — that was subsequently removed from outside of the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital’s ER.
“I wanted to use this opportunity to say how disappointed I was, Gwen, with the video that you made about the safe injection sites and about the-harm reduction facilities. I wonder how many lives have been lost since you made that video,” Versaevel said. “I also want to express my disappointment in the leadership of the NDP, George, I can not understand why a politician, the leader of your party, would roll back a decision that had been made to supply safe materials that was recommended by doctors and professionals in this field?”
Affordability
O’Mahony, who is a former Chilliwack-Hope NDP MLA, said that she ran on an “Axe the Tax” slogan in 2009 when the BC NDP campaigned against the consumer carbon tax that was introduced by the BC Liberals under former premier Gordan Campbell. Back then it was priced at $20 per tonne while this year it’s $80 per tonne, in line with the federal carbon price backstop.
“The carbon tax has ballooned and it’s impacting everything, groceries, business, industries,” she said. “So we are fighting to ensure that the carbon tax is removed.”
Versaevel said that the carbon tax benefits 65 per cent of families and that the tax comes back to lower-income households in the form of rebates which are “critical in helping people afford groceries, services, transportation and housing.”
She touted the BC Green’s promise for free public transit “there are people who do want transit, if it is convenient, if it is accessible, and if it is timely, so it gets them where they need to go at the times of date when they need to.”
Anderson took aim at the cost of housing.
“When I was on council, the average house price was $310,000 it’s now $875,000. Why did that happen?” he asked rhetorically. “Because of the fact that the BC Conservatives, people like John Rustad [who was first elected as a BC Liberal MLA in 2005] allowed for there to be real estate speculation, which our government got rid of. We made sure that real estate speculators were not in the market, which opened 20,000 new condominiums within British Columbia.”
