Image: City of Chilliwack / Chilliwack Councillor Bud Mercer, a retired 34-year member of the RCMP, dismantled the narrative behind the B.C. NDP government's drug decriminalization push during Tuesday's Chilliwack council meeting.  

By Mike Vanden Bosch

Drug decriminalization

Councillor with RCMP background calls drug decriminalization a ‘failure’, challenges Chilliwack MLAs on their silence

May 9, 2024 | 9:38 AM

CHILLIWACK — Chilliwack Councillor Bud Mercer needed only two minutes towards the end of Tuesday afternoon’s council meeting to dismantle the narrative behind the B.C. NDP government’s drug decriminalization experiment and challenge Chilliwack’s two MLAs for their apparent silence on the issue.

During the councillor’s reports portion of the meeting Tuesday (May 7), Mercer, a retired 34-year member of the RCMP, made the remarks just hours after the federal government granted British Columbia’s request to scale back its drug decriminalization pilot program, which made open drug use permissible.

While the goal behind the province’s three-year drug decriminalization project was to reduce shame and make addicted people more comfortable reaching out for help, Councillor Mercer shattered that flimsy rationale.

“The truth about the stigma, and I can’t leave that alone for a minute, is that it was another fallacy on the part of the province that was not well thought out,” said Mercer, a former high-ranking commissioner in the RCMP. “The reality is, essentially, simple drug possession has been legal for many, many years because Crown counsel will not approve charges. So, police simply do not arrest and people are not charged for simple possession of drugs and haven’t for several years.”

Mercer made the remarks after Councillor Chris Kloot introduced a motion at Tuesday’s meeting that urged the B.C. NDP-led government to focus on providing immediate, adequate funding for recovery and treatment for drug users.

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Councillor Kloot’s motion read as follows: “Whereas the Province of B.C. had enacted a three-year drug decriminalization project beginning in January of 2023, which allows adult drug users to carry up to 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and ecstasy for personal use, and whereas 2023 was British Columbia’s worst year ever for overdose deaths, and whereas the federal government has approved the provincial government request to expand areas where drug use is prohibited; therefore, be it resolved that a letter be written to the Premier and Cabinet from the Mayor’s Office, on behalf of the city council of Chilliwack, urging the Provincial Government to focus on providing immediate adequate funding for recovery and treatment for drug users.”

His motion passed unanimously among the six councillors who were present at Tuesday’s meeting. Councillor Jason Lum was absent.

“I think the current (re-criminalization announcement) is certainly welcomed as the reality is that street disorder has certainly accelerated during this experiment,” Councillor Kloot said. “We know the overdose drug crisis was declared a public health emergency back in 2016. I think the missed opportunity was when the provincial government made the announcement that they were moving in the direction to re-criminalize drugs in public spaces, it missed an opportunity for the government to simultaneously announce expanded significant treatment and recovery operations for drug users.”

Kloot said there are approximately 24 detox treatment beds within the Fraser Health catchment area serving a population of approximately two million people.

Image: City of Chilliwack / Councillor Chris Kloot said the provincial government missed an opportunity with its drug re-criminalization request by not providing expanded treatment options and services for substance users.

Councillor Mercer echoed Kloot’s comments by asking where the funding was for treatment. It just hasn’t happened, he said, and placed the blame squarely on the B.C. NDP government.

“When this (decriminalization) was announced and the federal government came out in approval, one of the things they said right up front was our role in this is to provide funding for treatment,” Mercer said in referring to the federal government’s role in drug decriminalization. “That hasn’t happened as well. This has been a failure since it started. It’s not doing what it was intended to do. It’s making a mess of our communities. This is something that our premier, who was never elected, went down this road. This is going to take years to unravel and make better, and this community is suffering for it in our downtown areas and our parks, and our MLAs sit quietly by.”

Chilliwack MLAs Dan Coulter and Kelli Paddon have said nothing on Twitter this past week about the sudden backpedal on the B.C. government’s drug decriminalization pilot. Instead, they’ve both gone after B.C. Conservative Party leader John Rustad for being cynical about the sudden ICBC rebate of $110 per driver roughly five months before the provincial election.