‘Come on, mayor and council. Let’s just get something right for a change,’ says Coun. McLean, pushing for a city council vote asking the province close the drug site at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre
Enough already. Decision day at Calgary city council is this coming Tuesday.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek and council get to vote Yes or No on a straight down the line pitch from Dan McLean, the councillor who knows what a mess is when he sees it.
McLean wants council to ask the Alberta government, led by Premier Danielle Smith, to close the Calgary drug consumption site and create an alternative plan for dealing with addicts, one that doesn’t turn a neighbourhood into a drug-fuelled open-air theatre of the absurd.
It would be like what happened in Red Deer with their city council.
It will be closed but their drug site will stay open until spring when the details of the new strategy are worked out.
The Smith government has often spoken of more detox beds, more treatment beds, patrolling paramedics attending to overdosing addicts and a greater focus on getting people off drugs.
As for the Calgary drug site at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre, the province waits. They want this city council to take a stand on the drug site before they make their move.
After all, former mayor Naheed Nenshi is reported to be the one who picked out this site, a move he now admits wasn’t the best decision.
If council votes Yes a new plan will be worked on.
“I will lead an addiction recovery plan with municipal partners and relevant stakeholders. I’ll be at the table,” says Dan Williams, Smith’s point man on mental health and addictions.
This has been one hell of a wait. Literally.
It’s been years of tears and jeers, fear and loathing.
Disgust at why no one in authority has done anything.
Everybody with two brain cells to rub together knows Calgary’s drug site is an experiment that blew up in the city’s face big-time.
The residents of the embattled Beltline neighbourhood know. They see it every day. They hear it when someone on the streets screams at something existing only in their mind.
The neighbourhood businesses know. They can itemize the damage.
The cops know. City council tells us they know. The provincial government under Premier Smith knows.
The expert panel who studied the situation knows.
There should be no surprise to anybody.
After all, what idiot thought if you parachuted in all kinds of hardcore drug users into a high-density neighbourhood of severely normal people there wouldn’t be big problems?
What sort of brain does it take where the gray matter of self-styled experts can be twisted and turned so reality is blocked out and only some make-believe world comes through?
“They’re playing politics with people’s safety. They’ve been playing this game for a long, long time. There’s got to be a time where the greater good outweighs the needs of the few,” says McLean, of some council colleagues.
“Let’s move forward after all these years. Please don’t play politics on Tuesday.”
But McLean says that is exactly what’s being played right now. Politics, city hall style.
Some politicians downtown do need an attitude adjustment in the worst way.
In principle.
“What I expect is there are members of council who want their fingerprints on this and want to dilute it, to delay it or do something.”
Why can’t some city politicians understand the obvious truth of the matter, the nasty facts on the ground?
“They’re living in an echo chamber with blinders on, seeing only one point of view,” says McLean.
To his council colleagues, McLean has these words.
“You might just take the blinders off and go for a walk through the neighbourhood. How about that?”
The pull-no-punches councillor says closing the drug site isn’t like sweating over the billions of dollars at stake on the Green Line LRT.
It’s not like the debate over a city budget in the billions of dollars.
This is so simple.
People are tired of being collateral damage to feed someone’s ideological agenda.
People are tired of being ignored — and how many people in how many Calgary neighbourhoods level the same charge at city hall.
Why does city hall make everything so difficult?
“Everything at city hall is looked at through a political lens instead of serving the needs of the people,” says McLean.
“Come on, mayor and council. Let’s just get something right for a change.”