Abbotsford may be just 66 kilometres up the Valley from our fair city, but you would think it was on another planet.
It appears that the town in the heart of B.C.’s Bible Belt had a come-to-Jesus moment when its council Monday night unanimously approved a motion to get rid of a city zoning bylaw banning harm reduction facilities. But it was not quite that straightforward.
For starters there was significant legal pressure on the council. Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society, representing the much abused Abbotsford homeless folks operating as the B.C./Yukon Association of Drug War Survivors, had launched a case last spring in the Supreme Court of B.C.
It alleged the zoning bylaw violated Charter and human rights by preventing access to medical services and increasing the risk of contracting life threatening diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV.
In July Pivot and its clients opened their campaign on a second front when their case was accepted as a complaint by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
It may be hard to believe that a zoning bylaw would have an impact on someone’s health but consider the statistics gathered among injection drug users since Abbotsford introduced that restrictive bylaw in 2005.
Abbotsford’s hepatitis C infection rate was 64.4 per 100,000 people in 2010 compared with the provincial rate of 54.9 and a national rate of 33.7 in 2009 according to Fraser Health Authority.
Fraser Health has been pressing Abbotsford for some time now to revise the bylaw and set up a needle exchange to drive down those numbers believed to be caused by addicts sharing needles.
While the Supreme Court case was proceeding with the expectation of appearing before a judge in April and the complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal was gathering steam, something else happened to push the council.
Simon Gibson, one of the most hardline Abbotsford councillors on the issue of keeping the ban in place, resigned his position earlier this month to take up his role as a full-time Liberal MLA in Victoria.
So after eight years council reversed itself and opened the door for a needle exchange. This comes a quarter of a century after Vancouver’s council under former mayor Gordon Campbell agreed to fund such a project and a dozen years after the provincial government, this time with Campbell as premier, introduced a needle exchange policy province wide.
Abbotsford mayor Bruce Banman noted in his comments that, aside from alleviating human suffering, the council decision would save taxpayers money given that the treatment of hepatitis C can cost $75,000 per person.
While this is clearly a step forward and both the Supreme Court case and the human rights complaint are now moot, that is not the end of it.
The appalling treatment of the homeless population by city officials and the cops has yet to be resolved. While Vancouver was encouraging people to move off the streets by creating low barrier shelters that would accept people with their pets, their goods piled into a shopping cart and the possibility they were on drugs, Abbotsford city staff had quite a different approach.
They were dispatched by their city manager to dump chicken manure on the ground where homeless people set up camp. The event was chronicled by Christian filmmaker Kevin Miller in The Chicken Manure Incident.
Miller followed Ward Draper and Jesse Wegenast, two pastors with the 5 and 2 Ministries, as they provided comfort to the vulnerable and marginalized and watched in dismay as city staff dumped the manure.
The city apparently informed other leaders of the faith community that populates Abbotsford ahead of their actions. None protested except the Salvation Army. And that was only after the fact.
And while cops in Vancouver assist the homeless to find their way to low barrier shelters, cops in Abbotsford allegedly moved in to slash the tents of the homeless and pepper spray any of them who resisted the order to move on.
The manure incident is the subject of yet another human right complaint. The destruction of the tents will be heard as a case in small claims court.
In the meantime the homeless of Abbotsford and their advocates wait to see just what services will be forthcoming now that a reluctant council has changed its mind.
