Vancouverites shouldn’t have to live in fear of random attacks

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The knowledge that a knife-wielding lunatic could run up on you and plunge his blade into your back or gut lurks in the mind of many Vancouverites because it happens so often.

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Wednesday’s mass stabbing happened on Robson Street in Vancouver, and in September, one man was murdered and another had his hand severed by a violent criminal just off Georgia Street. Both attacks happened barely more than a block away from each other in the heart of downtown. They did not happen in some lonely, dark alley on the Downtown Eastside’s dirtiest slum, but in daylight on two of the city’s busiest streets.

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The crime scenes were in plain eyesight of the Vancouver Public Library’s iconic main branch, frequented by students, children and downtown residents. Middle-class parents live here in or on the border of the Yaletown neighbourbood, with their infants in strollers as they go about to see the Christmas lights.

Vancouver’s crime rates are officially slackening, and this unsurprisingly follows Mayor Ken Sim fulfilling his promise to fund the hiring of 100 new officers for the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). The falling crime defies the promises made by criminal justice reformers, who insisted that the tried-and-true strategy of more police and more law enforcement was not the answer.

While any reduction in crime is always welcome, as is a stern refutation of those who seek to coddle criminals, it is the type of violence that remains which has left Vancouverites terrified and wary of going to the northeast quarter of downtown.

It is like the economy. Yes, GDP has not receded and the economy is technically growing. However, what economists and statisticians see in their data is not reflected in the grocery lines and rental office at the month’s end.

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The Metro Vancouver region is no stranger to outbreaks of violence. In 2009, a string of murders and revenge shootings broke out in a gang war over territory in the illegal drug trade. Gang shootings are targeted, not random.

Gangsters do not want or need the exposure and scrutiny that comes with killing a police officer or random civilian. In fact, they usually go out of their way to keep their criminal activities out of sight and out of mind from the general public, the gang war being a rare exception.

An addict who is already suffering from schizophrenia or a similar condition has no such caution. One false move and a Sunday shopper finds themselves under attack, which occurred last Thursday, also on Georgia Street, when a man was shoved to the ground in an unprovoked assault.

Fortunately for the victim, the assailant had no weapon, unlike during the mass stabbing on Wednesday.

Mayor Sim can hire even more police officers, but he only has so much power when it comes to addressing the tragic confluence of addiction, mental health and crime in B.C. He cannot alter the province’s legal code or outlaw drugs; that is the prerogative of the provincial government in Victoria and the federal government in Ottawa.

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B.C. Premier David Eby and the NDP government are fresh off a narrow victory in the October provincial election. Eby owes his victory less to his leadership and government’s achievements, and more to the unfortunate gaffes and missteps of the relatively green Conservative campaign that nearly toppled the NDP.

A largely rookie opposition party or leader falling short on their first try is an old story in Canadian politics, and usually followed by the same party winning the subsequent election.

During the election campaign amid falling poll numbers, Eby gambled by suggesting that he would be open to expanding involuntary treatment for addicts in B.C. Many undecided moderate voters breathed a sigh of relief as they heard the incumbent premier recognize that treating addicts like free-range cattle might not be the best idea.

Eby also backed away from the provincial carbon tax in a stunning move, proving himself to be a far more flexible politician than previously thought. If he wants to be remembered as more than the manager of B.C.’s decline after nearly squandering his NDP’s parliamentary majority, Eby should consider compromising more of his principles, namely his drug policy.

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The progressive experiments in crime and addictions have been a marked failure. Drug poisonings claim more lives every day and the wretched policy of safe supply sustains the addictions that keep people strung out and on the streets.

In neighbouring Alberta, the United Conservative Party (UCP) government has gone on the different route of recovery-based care and dismissed safe supply outright. This year’s results have shown an astounding 55 per cent reduction in drug-related deaths across Alberta from May 2023 to May 2024.

Without the votes of Vancouver, Eby’s NDP would have lost the election, and the city opted to give him a second chance. Taking advantage of that means rolling back the safe supply regime, either fully or partially, and moving fast to impose a system of involuntary care.

The only successful alternative to safe supply has resulted from the policies of a conservative government, but are the NDP so ideologically entrenched that they cannot accept they got it wrong?

Drugs, mental health problems and crime are three pillars of the Vancouver crisis, and knocking them down one by one is how it all ends. These stabbings cannot become normalized as part of life in the city. There has always been crime, but never like this.

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All people can do for now is reassure themselves that it won’t be them on Global News that evening. Nonetheless, when people have become so used to random violence that they internalize the fear and accept the possibility of murder, that is a failure borne of a government’s decisions.

Eby’s wafer-thin majority is unlikely to last a full four-year term, and unless he can make hard choices, voters in Vancouver will find someone else to make them instead.

National Post

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