Dear editor,
Mayor Kermit Dahl and Coun. Ron Kerr’s Blue Hat Memorial Project is performative at best and an insult to those who have lost their lives or loved ones to the toxic drug crisis.
The majority of Campbell River city council are working in opposition of evidence-based solutions to the toxic drug crisis. Their approach to the crisis since taking power in 2022 has been nothing but ill-informed and harmful to our community. Their actions have been a direct target to unhoused individuals who use substances in the public eye and further perpetuates stigma preventing others from reaching out for help. This directly causes people to use substances in more dangerous situations and increases the risk of overdose death. One of city councils boldest moves, for which the housing minister called them out on, was their attack on the Campbell River Art Gallery and the Overdose Prevention site. City council aimed to remove tax exemptions as a punishment for their lenient attitudes to our unhoused community members seeking shelter. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough Campbell River then made the news for city councils public nuisance amendment bylaw working against the province’s decriminalization initiative, as well as ignoring recommendations from the North Island Medical Health Officer and Chief Medical Health Officer. An unsanctioned overdose prevention site pop up across from the Campbell River hospital was hastily ordered shut down and met with far more animosity than other pop ups on the island.
Most recently several members of city council, including Kermit Dahl and Ronn Kerr have signed a letter of support backing a Conservative candidate Aaron Gunn and the Conservative party/ The Conservative Party has vowed to stop federal funding of safe supply and “drug dens” or rather overdose prevention sites that have prevented 10,000 deaths in BC alone over the past five years (Health Minister Josie Osborne, April 9, 2025). To try to disguise their harmful tactics and the blatant ignorance of evidence based solutions with performative virtue signalling is disgraceful.
If stigma persists and resources, like overdose prevention sites, safe supply, and clean needles are taken away, the risk of overdose death, brain injury from oxygen deprivation, and chronic disease like HIV and hepatitis increases. This does not lead us to a healthier community.
I agree that we need more options for treatment and recovery but it does not have to be one or the other as these politicians will have you believe. The approach taken by our city council is not in alignment with reducing overdose deaths; they would rather push people to the perimeters of society with the “out of sight out of mind” attitude and let the death toll continue to rise.
The good news is that we won’t have to wait for the circus to come to town to see a performance.
Roxanne Campbell - Campbell River
