Good news accompanied Premier Trudeau's visit. Health Canada has granted an exemption to the Vancouver Island Health Authority to operate a supervised consumption site in Victoria's Pandora Community Health and Wellness centre. This fixed site will be the first in Victoria and one of only 16 in Canada.

"Providing supervised consumption services is a critical component of ensuring people can use drugs in a safe space and find supports there too, when they are ready to begin recovery," said BC's Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Judy Darcy. "There is no one single solution to the overdose crisis. We must deliver a broad strategy so that when people need services, they ask once and get the help they need fast."

Construction should be completed by spring/summer 2018 and will provide 10 consumption booths as well as mental health counselling, a nursing clinic and links to addiction treatment programs. Fentanyl deaths in BC have increased from 12 a year in 2012 to 656 a year in 2016. As of May 2017, BC has seen over 525 fentanyl-related overdoses - 89 of those have been on the Island. There have been no overdose deaths in supervised consumption sites.

 

In a recent interview with the Times Colonist, Solicitor General Mike Farnworth shut down the idea that the province would mandate regionalization of local police forces, although he did add that he would support any municipality that chose to combine police services for efficiency.

Currently, Greater Victoria has 4 municipal forces and 2 RCMP detachments for the region. Voluntary funding and support for integrated units such as traffic, major crime, domestic violence and tactical response are in place. Unfortunately, the police forces operate using the opt-in, opt-out model that can result in units like the Regional Crime Unit, which targeted prolific offenders, to suddenly collapse.

The Chamber is a strong proponent of better governance through fewer governments and hopes to see more efforts in the region to focus on the effectiveness and efficiency of municipal service delivery to reduce the burden on businesses and improve Greater Victoria's reputation as a whole.

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