Former Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell to oversee provincial efforts on DTES
By Canadian Press on September 29, 2025.
VICTORIA — Former senator and past Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell has been appointed as British Columbia’s new point-person to improve quality of life for those living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Campbell, who served as mayor between 2002 and 2005, then in the Senate until 2023, says in a statement that he will use his experience and relationships to improve housing and care for unhoused people, especially women, Indigenous people and those with complex mental health and addictions.
Campbell replaces Michael Bryant, whose contract was cancelled in May 2025 after questions arose over lack of transparency about his appointment and the cost of the contract.
Crime, poverty and addiction plague the Vancouver neighbourhood, but housing minister Christine Boyle says her government is determined to deliver better outcomes for the community.
Campbell, whose contract will run until March next year, says that working together with locals groups will help move the “unique and incredibly resourceful” neighbourhood forward in a “focused, compassionate and effective way.”
The government says Campbell’s focus in the neighbourhood will be on co-ordinating and advancing provincial improvements for people, public spaces, infrastructure, health care, housing and economic development.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2025.
Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press
11-10
Vancouver is a little more unique than Lethbridge because of the extremely high rents/cost of living, which have put many on the streets who then got addicted to mask the mental anguish of being homeless. You also have a major organized crime factor that has dramatically increased due to the drug crisis, which opened the door for increased organized crime element.
You should be moving the hundreds of millions blown are harm reduction policies which have failed badly since introduced in 2003 with the first safe injection site into ‘effective’ treatment and recovery programs. You cannot get people off the streets unless they have place to live away from the streets once they complete the program and make sure they have sufficient counselling supports to prevent relapse.
BC is such a mess it will take many years to reverse the mistakes made by one bad policy onto another. It has got so bad that they now hide their fatal overdoses from supposed ‘safe supply’ drugs and only report the fatal overdoses for what they call ‘illegal toxic’ drugs.
Canada now has the most fatal overdoses per capita in the world, thanks to the federal government allowing BC to ‘experiment’ with various policies, which have all failed! Alberta has proven in just 2 years of implementing treatment recovery programs over harm reduction/SCS sites, that treatment recovery is the most effective, showing dramatic results with many of those policies not implemented fully.
Countries around the world look at BC as an example of what not to do in dealing with the drug crisis.
The addiction has been allowed to explode in BC causing negative increases in crime, prostitution, homlessness, property damage, and many other areas which allowed organized crime to grow to service those areas. It stretched medical staff in hospitals/cliinic, EMS/Fire/Police to the max responding to incidents, and caused issues on the streets and in parks not seen before in Vancouver. Families were devastated, llves were lost and billions have been blown yet every year the fatal overdoses increase, as they have since 2003.
Vancouver was the epicenter of the drug crisis and as it was mishandled, it spread like cancer around the province.
Mr. Campbell was Mayor when the first safe injection site was opened in 2003! Have you learned anything from that decision? I know that it has snowballed into a snowball the size of the moon, now and you are not responsible for that, but do you have what it takes to tackle this monumental task which will take many years to fix?
BC is so far down the rabbit hole they will need at least 15 years to see significant changes because they have hundreds of non-profit organizations who live off of the this crisis. The administrators are all well paid in most of the non-profits and we have already seen the fight they put up when you try to move away from more successful policies that are proven to work. They cannot find another job so they fight hard, even if it isn’t in the addicts best interests.
Good Luck! I do wish you will be able to bring changes that will end the madness in BC! Too many people have died and too many families have been devastated!