GOLD: ‘Please do not set this up in our neighborhood,’ Smith told about planned drug site

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Bernadette Smith looked nervous when she got out of her car to walk over to the public consultation meeting about a proposed drug user site on Thursday night and with good reason.

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Despite clear attempts by the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre and government officials to limit awareness of the meeting taking place, more than 120 people showed up for the 90-minute meeting, and 100 of them were there to demand real answers about how the site would operate and how they would be kept safe.

Early on in the Q and A session, Smith, the MLA for the area, was confronted by her worst nightmare — an aboriginal man with knowledge of the addictions field and their culture, who was there to speak truth to power.

Identifying himself as Medicine Horse Man, he blasted Smith and the AHWC for even thinking about a supervised consumption site at all, let alone at 200 Disraeli across from Argyle High School.

“I can tell you, what you are doing right now, if we were to have a family member do the same things that you’re talking about, testing and giving them drugs, it’s called enabling,” he said to applause.

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Open your eyes

“You’re talking about opiate use, drug use, take a look on Main Street. All you have to do is open your eyes, there’s treatment available right there. We don’t need replication of services. With that being said, we also don’t need to put our children at risk.”

He described his 13-year-old son watching “three guys beat the living s— out of another guy” while on his to school and described an incident while driving his son to work at 5 a.m. and seeing a nude woman on the street. “This is what we need to stop and those processes that you’re talking about (at the site) are going to escalate the problem.”

He showed his medicine wheel and said Smith’s proposal “does not align with the seven teachings.”

As a clinical trauma specialist, he spent every day for five years in the area, “watching my brothers and sisters struggle, struggle with sobriety … we don’t need to enable them … addiction is 90% trauma, we heard a blip about trauma services. That is no value in what is being sold here today, lip service.”

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“I’m not in favour of having it here, but if you want to take it to the south side of town, I think that would be a great idea,” he said.

Since “we’re already letting people on the bus for free,” bus drivers could take addicts to get “drugs tested in a safer community, why does that not make sense? You already have safety on the south side and not the gang problems and the drug dealers.”

“I believe in our neighbourhood. I know there’s people that believe in our neighborhood as well. Together we are bringing it up. We do not need to increase the problems,” he said, mentioning the plague of murdered Indigenous women and also of men being murdered.

“We need to clean this up. I’m begging you, please, please do not set this up in our neighbourhood.”

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The thunderous applause exceeded any positive reaction Smith got from the crowd the rest of the meeting.

Thriving poverty industry

Another indigenous man spoke about moving from Sage Creek to return to the North End, where his family first settled after leaving a reserve three generations ago. He raised the issue of how the area has been sacrificed for the poverty industry to thrive.

“Your stats aren’t right,” he told Smith. “For generations us aboriginals have been pushed to the centre of our city and left out. Nothing’s been said about the concentration of services, why don’t you spread them out? Don’t push us to the centre of the city and put all those services where we are.”

Others stood and told about rampaging crime in the area, and the failure of police in the last decade to help the community.

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A man associated with a church next door to the proposed site told of his daughter going to dance class, but staying in her car until others arrived to walk with her because it’s already so dangerous. Of his father-in-law coming back from a funeral to find his car’s back window broken. Of a member of their Folklorama committee finding a vagrant inside their vehicle “claiming to want to keep warm.”

“We had to put up a fence with barbed wire on top. It’s sad but it’s necessary.”

While he’s in favour of a consumption site, Disraeli Freeway is “not a safe location if you’ve got somebody who’s walking around — they can get killed, it’s a valid concern. I think the better choice would be somewhere close to mental health services like Health Sciences Centre.”

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Regardless of police arresting drug dealers who might lurk near the site, “I have no faith in our court system because it’s a turnstile right now.”

“What guarantees do we have that nobody’s going to get hurt?”

Another man, Ben, was there with his wife, and both work in the area and raise their kids there. He spoke about how “we have a beautiful economy here for addiction,” with multiple scrap yards and pawn shops nearby, easy destinations for addicts with stolen goods- and within walking distance of 200 Disraeli. “This is a safety concern for our children and for us in general.”

‘You’re not representing us

He said to Smith, ”Bernadette, you’re our elected official and you’re the one that’s supposed to be representing us. You’re not representing us … how are you going to make our streets safer, and safer for our children. What are you doing to make us safer?”

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“Well, the safety and security in and around this site is number one for our government,” she repeated and then mentioned the plan was for an 8-foot-high fence and security guards inside the site. How that protects anyone but the drug users and staff is anyone’s guess.

Another gentleman touched on the effects of drug crime he’s personally experienced, including an attempt on his life, finding a dead body 30 feet in front of his house and his friends and neighbours being assaulted, break-ins, and “the children robbed and threatened by drug-intoxicated individuals.”

“The re-assurances we’ve been given about how this supervised drug consumption site is going to lessen public intoxication, violence, crime and social mayhem we’ve been experiencing is quite frankly, not believable.”

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He told about the public meetings when the River Point Drug Treatment Centre moved into the old Sharon Home building at the foot of Magnus Avenue.

Safety assurances were just lies

“We and our neighbours were assured that there was going to be strict monitoring of the grounds and no criminal activity would be tolerated. They pledged around-the-clock security would shut down any bad behaviour. We believed the provincial government then, and were sadly mistaken … the rest of the assurances were just lies.”

Instead, they’ve gotten graffiti, drug use, violence and “a marshalling ground for homeless people to get ready to create encampments,” he said.

“You can’t even call anyone to report it because you just get a recorded message. After all this abject nonsense about ‘defunding the police’, we have less of a police presence in our neighbourhood now than we had 10 years ago … they’ve taken the cops from our neighbourhood to assuage the fears of people standing in line to get Winnipeg Jets tickets. Does that sound reasonable?”

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A startling admission came from Winnipeg Police Superintendent Bonnie Emerson, who came to the sessions on Tuesday and Thursday this week only because the Point Douglas Residents Committee invited the police to participate.

She said that the Tuesday meeting brought to light such serious concerns about neighbourhood safety she was willing to hold a separate forum on that issue, calling “this turnout extraordinary.” But as for the federal application process requiring a plan to address concerns about “neighbourhood impact,” she said “so far we haven’t been privy to this other than Tuesday.”

That means that despite Smith and the proponents claiming they’ve been consulting with police about the public safety aspects of the site proposal, it hasn’t been happening.

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Another thing that isn’t happening, apparently, is another meeting between Smith, the AHWC, and the residents and property owners of Point Douglas.

When the meeting hit the designated ending time and with a half dozen people still wanting to ask questions and make comments, I asked aloud “is there going to be another meeting scheduled with the community?”

Smith and her team packed up to leave, ignoring the residents echoing my question. They’ve heard enough, but it seems the residents have just started.

— Marty Gold is a Winnipeg journalist. You can find more of his work at The Great Canadian Talk Show.

Have thoughts on what’s going on in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada or across the world? Send us a letter to the editor at wpgsun.letters@kleinmedia.ca

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