Ken Sim

When Vancouver voters cast their ballots in the municipal election, they'll be doing more than just voting for a mayor or councillors or park board.

They will also be asked two questions as part of a plebiscite that was the idea of ABC and Mayor Ken Sim.

So this is one of the questions.

It asks, should the city of Vancouver formally ask the province of BC 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? Whew.

So, first of all, I want to say that I have worked at St. Paul's for more than 30 years as a physician, and I'm really speaking from my Opinion and experience.

And I'm not an addictions medical specialist, and nor do I design or build hospitals and secure sites.

But I think it's clear just from walking the building, if you've been in St. Paul's to any degree like I have and walked its halls every day, It's clear that it is not meant for what Ken Sim is proposing.

Parts of the hospital go back more than a century.

And he's already been asked and said that he supports the expansion of a pipeline, the existing pipeline route into the city of Vancouver.

We have Mayor Ken Sim and others running for election in the city of Vancouver and in Burnaby as well, saying that they welcome an expansion of tanker traffic in Vancouver, an expansion of the port of Vancouver to house increased global commodity exports to the rest of the world through Vancouver.

These are That was not on the scene two years ago, let alone five years ago, and Christy Clark was seen as a brave voice in the wilderness fighting with the coalition government to try to fight against these forces who are now saying that they're in favor of it.

The ground has shifted dramatically, and I hope Albertans recognize that, that there's an emerging, maybe not consensus, but a clear... firm plurality and probably majority across Western Canada that is on Alberta's side.

I, I'm not, I haven't seen a whole lot of action yet from Pete Fry, who was the putative, uh, standard-bearer for the so-called progressive forces.

The other person who wants to make some waves is, uh, Rebecca Bligh, uh, who was a member of, uh, Ken Sim's, uh, or, you know, ABC team until they threw her out.

And, uh, she's attracting some attention now as a possible, uh, standard-bearer, and, uh, I, uh, we'll see what happens in the next, uh, in the next few days on that front.

Uh, Kareem, um, you know, was very pleased that I said nice things about his platform, and, uh, he's welcome to those nice words.

It's always been desperate.

I said I would...

That's why I said last time I don't, I don't understand how Ken Sim can lose, although there's a lot of, uh, people who don't want him to win.

Uh, is there, is there a way that they can make that happen? And I'm not sure if there is.