Bob Mackin
Vancouver parks and beaches will remain open to sleeping overnight for the homeless during FIFA World Cup, said a top city official on May 25.
Could they also become a magnet for budget-conscious soccer fans who have already paid high prices for airfare and tickets?
“Our anticipation is that people that are relying on parks overnight, continue to be people who need it, because they don’t have access to housing or shelter,” said deputy city manager Sandra Singh. “We will have to address any other types of overnight camping, in that case, if we encounter that. So we do have our bylaw officers, we have our integrated response team, the Park Rangers will all be monitoring inner-city parks during the World Cup.”
Singh spoke to reporters during the release of Vancouver’s final human rights action plan, as required by FIFA. The key addition to the February-released draft is the contracting of 10 charities for $182,184 to handle match-day outreach to people who are homeless or working in prostitution, and to provide temporary daytime shelters.
The B.C. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that people who do not have adequate shelter can sleep in public places overnight. Singh said that would not change during the World Cup.
“Our regular daily bylaw compliance does require that people take down temporary structures that they pack up along, so that sidewalks are passable, buildings are accessible, parks are usable by the whole community,” Singh said.
Olympic lessons ignored
Singh said the plan was drawn-up with data from previous FIFA World Cup host cities. It did not rely on Vancouver’s experience hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. Despite the increase in drunkenness, fights and sexual assaults.
Singh said the Olympics featured concurrent multisport events at multiple sites for three weeks, versus the World Cup, which is seven matches over a three-and-a-half week period.
“It’s a very, very different scale and scope of hosting, and that difference really was part of what informed our development of the human rights action plan,” she said.
Singh was asked how many human rights complaints — such as discrimination or displacement — the city recorded last year.
“We have not looked at that.”
Was the plan tested?
Vancouver Police, Vancouver Fire and Rescue and Emergency Health Services have gone from tabletop exercises to mock disasters in their preparations for the World Cup.
Last December, they even simulated a vehicle ramming attack and shooting rampageat the Agrodome, near the Fan Festival site at the PNE.
Singh admitted there was no such simulation for the human rights action plan.
“None of the day-to-day kind of experience in the city changes. The human rights action plan seeks to add-in some additional focused resources on the seven match days to just increase presence and foot presence in the public realm of people that are trained to support people experiencing various types of vulnerabilities or risks,” Singh said. “So we’re kind of enhancing the services that are already out there in the community through these seven match days.”
Who to call
Singh said people can report human rights violations via the agencies listed on the host committee’s Need to Know information page.
“People have options as to where they can lodge their complaint of something that might happen, or an issue of concern that they’ve observed, or that they’ve experienced themselves,” she said.
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