Addictions treatment centre clears first hurdle at city hall

A plan to build an addictions treatment centre on the site of a St. Charles hockey arena has cleared its first hurdle at city hall.

Council's property committee voted Monday to approve the sale of Vimy Arena, a vacant recreation facility in the Crestview neighbourhood, to the province for a loonie as a prelude to the construction of a 50-bed addictions-treatment centre called the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre.

• City to consider land sale in support of addiction recovery centre
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Over the course of a day-long meeting, two dozen delegates addressed the committee, including broadcaster Scott Oake, whose son Bruce died of an opioid overdose.

The land has been appraised at $1.43 million, but the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation, a provincial Crown company, made the city a formal offer of one loonie. 

Oake worried that would be a "dealbreaker."

"Reluctant as I am to engage in hyperbole, I will say lives are being lost every day. We can't save them all but we'll have a shot at some when the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre is open. And maybe you'll have to decide if those lives are worth $1.43 million," he said. 

In the end, Council's property committee voted to amend the deal to forgo revenue from the sale, instead taking the symbolic $1. 

Councillors John Orlikow (River Heights-Fort Garry), Jenny Gerbasi (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) and Matt Allard (St. Boniface) voted in favour of the plan.

"This is a derelict building we can't salvage that's full of needles and drug deals right now," Gerbasi said.

St. Charles Coun. Shawn Dobson opposed the sale of the land in his ward because he wants it reserved for green space.

He accused the city of rushing through the deal without consulting residents or himself.

Assiniboia MLA Steven Fletcher, who also opposes the project, appeared before property committee to express similar views.

"Urban green space is extraordinarily rare and once it's gone, it's gone," said Fletcher, an independent MLA.

Oake said the treatment centre would rise only on the existing arena footprint and said no green space along Sturgeon Creek would be lost.

Recovered cocaine and alcohol addict Jonathan Parker said concerns about green space are a smokescreen for people who simply don't want an addictions-treatment centre in their neighbourhood.

"What would happen if one of their children needed treatment? Would they have $35,000 to $50,000 to send them to a privately owned facility, or would they be knocking on the door of the first facility, like the proposed facility, they could find? I think I know the answer," said Parker, who received treatment at a facility in Nanaimo, B.C.

"Treatment taught me how to live. It taught me how to be sober and how to be a contributing member of society,"  Parker said. "Residential treatment saved my life."

He also ridiculed the notion drug dealers will gravitate to the addictions treatment centre in hope of making a sale. People who sell illicit pharmaceuticals are out to make money, not hoping to sell their wares to someone undergoing a relapse, he said.

The Vimy Arena also faces approval at executive policy committee and then council as a whole on Jan. 25, where it must be approved by a two-thirds majority of elected officials.

The sale is also subject to a successful rezoning, a process that requires a public hearing.