ABC Wants More Involuntary Care. No, Say Vancouver Liberals

Vancouver Liberals mayoral candidate Kareem Allam is asking Vancouverites to vote no on Oct. 17 when asked if they want to convert the old St. Paul’s Hospital into an involuntary care facility.

The plebiscite , which will appear on the municipal election ballot, will centre on whether the city should ask the province to “convert portions of the old St. Paul’s Hospital, or another similar site, into a secure medical facility that provides acute voluntary and 100-plus involuntary care beds for individuals posing a serious risk to themselves or others due to severe substance use and mental health disorders.”

Allam told The Tyee the facility would amount to a “ mental health prison ” and is asking Vancouverites to vote no for three main reasons.

First, because it’s non-binding, so putting it on the ballot was a waste of money, he said.

Adding two plebiscite questions to the ballot will cost the city about $500,000, an ABC Vancouver spokesperson told The Tyee. ABC has the majority of seats on city council and voted to put the plebiscite on the ballot.

Second, Allam said, opening a facility such as this falls under provincial, not municipal, jurisdiction, and putting people who use drugs in an involuntary care facility would be illegal.

And third, because it would cost an enormous amount of money to renovate the building so it could offer involuntary care, which he said would be better spent revitalizing the neighbourhood.

When the province sold St. Paul’s Hospital to Concord Pacific in 2020 for nearly $1 billion, the idea was that a new development would revitalize the edge of Davie Village and the edge of the downtown business district, Allam said.

Putting in a “prison” would be a missed opportunity for the neighbourhood and would offer a “bailout” to the developer now that the market has bottomed out, he added.

ABC Coun. Lisa Dominato said she is “shocked” to hear Allam call the site a potential bailout.

“The whole focus of this is about getting the services we need,” she said, adding Vancouverites can clearly see people’s needs are not being met around the city.

Dominato said she has been “consistently hearing for the course of this term” that the public is concerned about street disorder and people who are “clearly suffering and severely unwell.”

“From my perspective, that gives us a clear mandate to be seeking help from the province and advocating for the necessary resources,” she told The Tyee.

When asked why a plebiscite is needed, Dominato said a yes vote would provide a “clear endorsement” to take to the province to advocate for more health-care resources.