The B.C. government is facing pressure on the pace of its rollout of involuntary treatment in the wake of another apparently random violent attack.
A Vancouver police officer was slashed and seriously injured in the Downtown Eastside on Tuesday night. Charged in the attack is Solaris Onatta Running Dey, who remains in custody.
Dey was convicted four years ago of strangling his girlfriend to death in 2018, and in handing down a sentence, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen concluded it was “clear he was suffering from a mental illness.”
Not long before the killing, he was hospitalized involuntarily with psychotic symptoms under B.C.’s Mental Health Act. Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar-type substance use disorder and substance-induced psychotic disorder, he would appear to be the ideal candidate for secure, involuntary treatment — one of the BC NDP’s pre-election campaign promises.
But while B.C.’s 2025 budget nodded towards work already underway on the file, it did not lay out any specific new spending measures.
That’s drawn heat from the BC Conservatives who focused heavily on crime and public safety issues in their election campaign, including involuntary treatment.
Leader John Rustad said the government is not moving quickly enough on the file.
“We need to get these prolific violent offenders off the street we need to use the Mental Health Act to do it because our courts and the justice system is failing people in this province,” Rustad said.
Premier David pushed back on Wednesday, suggesting that while there wasn’t a line item in the budget, “it’s not correct” that resources haven’t been allocated.
Eby said two involuntary treatment sites, one at the South Fraser Pretrial Centre and one at Alouette Homes in Maple Ridge, are slated to open in the coming weeks.
The Surrey facility will treat people who are being held on remand or who have been sentenced to custody, while the Maple Ridge facility will work with people who are being held under the Mental Health Act.
Money for the initiative, Eby said, is included in the funding boost to the Ministry of Health. According to the budget, $500 million in new funding has been set out over three years to “support and sustain addictions treatment and recovery programs established through previous budgets.”
“The policy work and the work around the staffing levels and who will do this work, is it corrections officials and so on, all that work is underway, the money is there to do this,” Eby said.
Eby said B.C.’s new chief scientific adviser for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders is also working to estimate how many people may require involuntary treatment, in order to plan out how many facilities may be required throughout the province.
“We are currently working on identifying an additional site in the north,” he said. “On the island, we are doing regional centres.”
The involuntary treatment facility at the South Fraser Pretrial Centre is slated to open by the end of the month.