B.C. has slid into an attitude of “endless accommodation” of antisocial behaviour by desperately ill people on downtown streets, says the man at the epicentre of the epicentre of Victoria’s downtown decay.

Julian Daly, CEO of Our Place, the agency most directly involved in the drug-infused mental-health crisis most obvious on Pandora Avenue, told municipal leaders at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention that the balance between compassion and enforcing expectations has been lost.

The ongoing “what to do” debate has flattened into an overly simple artificial choice between compassion and enforcement, he said, but both elements and a lot more are needed to make a difference.

One camp, which the B.C. government endorsed for years, focuses on empathizing with drug addicts. It stresses that addiction is a health problem, not a choice, and concentrates on the sufferers.

On the other side are people suffering the consequences of the disintegration of social order and losing patience.

But reducing it to that choice is a mistake, said Daly, who has spent his career caring for the marginalized.

“We’ve slid into what sometimes feels like endless accommodation of behaviours on........

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