The Week - June 18

Calls down, work up

A recent annual report on the Victoria Police Department’s 2008-10 Strategic Plan suggests that between 2007 and 2008, calls for service related to prostitution in the city decreased 61 percent—from 253 calls to 98.

Monday was unable to reach a VicPD spokesperson for comment, but we asked Chris Leischner, executive director of the Prostitute Empowerment Education and Resource Society—which assists sex workers though its office and mobile services—for her thoughts on what might account for the decline.

Leischner immediately ruled out a reduction in the number of women selling their bodies as an explanation.

“The numbers using our RV have gone up exponentially from 2007 to now in 2009,” she says. “In 2007 we were getting around 250 or 300 contacts a month. Last year that went up to 400-something, and this month it was 585.”

Leischner says the decline in police calls may have something to do with the fact the PEERS mobile services is reaching the women that need assistance, so there are less sex workers calling on emergency services to help them out.

Also, Leischner says the street-based sex business in Victoria has recently migrated away from Rock Bay, a location that brought workers into contact with residents of the residential/industrial area and closer to the downtown core. They also appear to be working earlier hours, she adds.

“I think they feel safer,” says Leischner. “And when they feel safer and can do the work that they have to do—not that they want to do—then they’re out there where the services are, and our services are out there when they need them and so that really reduces a lot of the pressure of going into residential areas.”

Doing drugs better

A dozen area drug users and their allies returned to Victoria on Sunday from a fact-finding trip to Vancouver sponsored by AIDS Vancouver Island and the Society of Living Intravenous Drug Users. While there, the group paid a visit to the Dr. Peter Centre, a health facility for HIV-positive people.

Opened a year before the well-publicized Insite Clinic on East Hastings, the Dr. Peter Centre is located in an upscale neighbourhood near St. Paul’s Hospital. It contains a small supervised injection site and crack smoking is permitted on the grounds by registered clinic clients. Two daycare centres are located in a one-block radius and there’s an elementary school two blocks from the site.

“It’s a total respect place.,” says Victoria Street Advocacy Group member Randy Beddow. “They treat you like a human being. They give out free breakfasts and lunches to keep people healthy. They have a doctor on site, a nurse on site, counsellors on site—they have just about everything a drug addict would need to access.”

With an exclusively HIV-positive clientele, it makes sense to offer a safe consumption site, says Beddow, who regularly spends mornings on rig-digs around Downtown Victoria.

“The needles don’t go into the street there,” he says “The needles all stay in-house. The fix happens inside a safe injection room so there’s no needles on the street at all.”

Practitioner problems

After last week’s article about the 2007 loss (and now possible return) of a nurse practitioner to the James Bay Community Project, Monday received a call from VIHA’s primary health care director Victoria Power taking exception to our description of the situation as a “cut.”

Power says it was a mutual decision between VIHA and the clinic after two nurse practitioners left the position in one year.

“It was an agreed-upon pause in order to make sure that the role was understood and described well, so that in future, whatever nurse practitioner works there is successful,” Power says.

JBCP health services director Graham Taylor tells Monday via e-mail that while Power’s rendition of events is consistent with what occurred, “We see this issue as a reduction or loss of a valuable position we once had. We are hoping VIHA and the Ministry of Health will soon see the value of . . . a nurse practitioner here at James Bay.”

Stantec nets a big one

At an in-camera meeting last week, the CRD voted to switch its principle consultant in the development of secondary sewage treatment for the region.

Out are the folks from CM2H Hill and in is the mega-consultancy Stantec. If the sewage treatment project comes in at the projected $1.2 billion price tag, Stantec stands to reap between $35 and $50 million over the course of eight years.

“Certainly [Stantec has] brought forward a lot of innovation, and they’ve been interested in this project for a long time,” says CRD environmental services general manager Dwayne Kalynchuk. “They also have a sizable office in Victoria.”

Both Kalynchuk and CRD sewage treatment project manager Tony Brcic are former Stantec employees.