Motion asks Vancouver to build standards that help save more lives while giving neighbourhoods clarity and trust

VANCOUVER, B.C. — July 13, 2026 — Vancouver is still losing people to the toxic drug crisis. Every death is preventable, and every day without clear standards for the services meant to prevent them is a day where care can fall through the cracks. In the wake of Mayor Sim’s move to use all tools available to prevent the opening of a downtown overdose prevention site, Councillor Pete Fry is bringing a motion to the July 15, 2026 Council meeting to ensure that Vancouver continues to support life-saving services by adding some regulatory conditions that uphold the City’s commitments to community safety.

The motion asks the City to develop a policy framework for overdose prevention and harm reduction services built around a simple premise: these services save lives, and they save more lives when they operate consistently, transparently, and with the trust of the neighbourhoods around them.

“Overdose prevention sites exist because they work,” said Fry. “They keep people alive long enough to have a meaningful intervention, a next conversation, a path to treatment. This motion is about ensuring those services are delivered consistently and fairly, and when we talk about harm reduction we are also looking through a broad community lens.”

Overdose prevention and harm reduction services do more than prevent deaths in the moment. They connect people who use drugs to health workers, reduce the spread of infectious disease, and create a point of contact for people who may otherwise have no relationship with the health care system at all. For many clients, an overdose prevention site is the first door into treatment, housing support, or ongoing care.

Fry's motion asks staff to develop clear operating standards and licensing conditions that include cleanliness and public order requirements, defined operating plans, Good Neighbour Agreements, complaint-response systems, and public reporting: the kind of consistency that lets these services do their health work well while earning the confidence of the people living and working nearby.

“Neighbours aren't wrong to want clear answers when something isn't working, and people who use these services aren't wrong to need them to keep existing,” said Fry. “Good standards make both of those things true at once. The City typically applies conditions to otherwise provincially controlled and regulated consumption and distribution sites for liquor and cannabis, yet somehow we never endeavoured to set standards for OPS and harm reduction.”

The motion does not restrict access to overdose prevention or harm reduction services, does not create new rules that take effect immediately, and is not directed at any current or proposed facility. It does not override the provincial health authority, which remains primarily responsible for delivering these services. Instead, it seeks to use the City's own authority for land use and licensing to support how they operate in the community, not whether they exist.

“This is health policy, not a fight over whether these services should exist,” said Fry. “I want a city where the person who needs an overdose prevention site can find one, and the neighbour next door has confidence in how it's run. Those two things belong together.”

The motion asks staff to report back to Council with recommendations to regulate delivery of overdose prevention and harm reduction services under conditions of the City’s zoning, permitting and licensing tools.