Breakdown on the Road to Civil City

On November 13th, almost a year after Mayor Sam Sullivan and City Councillor Kim Capri announced Project Civil City, project commissioner Geoff Plant submitted his first progress report. In November of 2006, Project Civil City was given $300,000 to achieve a 50% reduction in homelessness, aggressive panhandling and the open drug market by 2010. In May of 2007, Plant was appointed to manage the project and establish four benchmarks that would allow progress in these areas to be charted. The progress report, however, fails to offer a benchmark in any field except homelessness. Plant places Vancouver’s homeless population at roughly 2,000, a 50% increase since 2005. Many on City Council were critical of the report’s lack of progress, and questioned the value of Project Civil City altogether. Though 67% of those polled by the project feel that “City Council must take immediate action to address the [three] problems,” after a year in operation, practically no significant action has been taken. Plant himself is skeptical of a 50% reduction in homelessness by 2010. The report particularly shows weaknesses in the field of drug abuse. Released in March of 2007, prior to Plant’s appointment, Project Civil City’s action plan praised successful drug abuse programs such as the Safe Injection Site (SIS). Indeed, that original plan called to “extend the current SIS project, add to existing capacity in Vancouver, and to implement other SISs in appropriate cities in the Lower Mainland” within one year. In 2-3 years, the action plan wanted to “expand SIS services to other cities in Canada.” Such ambition was absent from Plant’s progress report, which took no definitive stance on the issue of drug abuse. Because the original goal to expand SIS operation depended on the participation of the federal government, the progress report points out that “for every dollar of tax collected in Canada, just 8 cents goes to the Municipal Government.” The report claims that “the increase in homelessness can be viewed as a consequence of specific decisions… undertaken by senior levels of government.” Though Mayor Sullivan praised the insights provided by the report, Councillor Raymond Louie did not accept federal resistance as an excuse for the City’s lack of progress. He called council’s attention to the many programs in Vancouver that are underfunded on a municipal level. The dominant criticism of the report was that it failed to identify new civil problems. While Plant suggested that the recent civil strike was a cause for delay, councillors pointed out that the fundamental tenets of the report have been public knowledge for years. Councillor Louie said that, rather than studying further, “[We should be] putting the resources necessary to the initiatives that are underway currently… and enable those programs to have some success.” Some claim that the progress report postures increased law enforcement as the solution. According to the project’s survey, “there was significant feedback on the need for additional enforcement and the role of the police. In many cases, respondents indicated a need to take a strong stand on aggressive panhandling, petty crime and open drug use.” Because the Project Civil City survey was conducted online, the diversity of this sample group is dubious. Regardless of the criticism, council voted to accept the report. Plant promised to further acquaint himself with Vancouver’s problems, and council will receive his official one year report in the Spring of 2008.