BC Conservative Party Leader John Rustad holds roundtable with Chinatown community

With the provincial election looming, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad visited Chinatown Friday afternoon to speak to business owners and community members about their concerns.

Most of those he spoke to were focused on crime, vandalism, drugs, and disorder in the neighbourhood.

“Chinatown is more than capable of being successful on its own,” Rustad said.

“We just need to be able to set that framework, create that vision, and do what we can on a provincial scale to alleviate those issues that the community is facing.”

Some community members say the issues are, in part, because Chinatown is beside the Downtown Eastside, where there’s often open drug use and a dense population of unhoused people.

But Sarah Blyth with the Overdose Prevention Society says Chinatown and the DTES have a lot in common, so they need to work together.

“Having housing for people in the Downtown Eastside is really important, because if people have housing, they can use their washrooms inside, they have a place to go, they’re not necessarily in the streets, so working together and advocating for the Downtown Eastside to get support that they need — whether it be recovery, or detox, or whether it be safe injection sites so people can not be using outside, they can be using inside,” Blyth said.

“The violence — we experience violence in the Downtown Eastside too. We don’t want violence.”

A number of incidents have rocked the neighbourhood over the last two years, including a triple stabbing at the Light Up Chinatown Festival last September. More recently, a Japanese citizen was stabbed and killed in June.