B.C. leaders debate health care, vaccines — and paper straws

The leaders of the three major B.C. political parties clashed in a televised debate on Tuesday, which was touted as an attempt to appeal to undecided voters, but also provided an opportunity to land attacks against their opponents. 

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby portrayed B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad as an anti-vaccine climate change denier who is advancing harmful conspiracy theories and making promises that are not grounded in financial reality. 

Rustad said seven years of NDP rule has created a province where tent cities have proliferated, crime is on the rise, people can't afford a home or get basic health care — and can't even drink from plastic straws if they want to. 

B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau attacked both leaders for lacking a long-term vision, saying her party is the only one giving people hope for the future.

"I feel like I live in a different place from John Rustad — his vision of B.C. is one that is dark and gloomy," Furstenau said.

Rustad shared an anecdote of seeing someone overdose Tuesday at the corner of Vancouver's Robson and Hornby streets as evidence that the overdose crisis has gotten worse under the B.C. NDP's experiment with drug decriminalization. 

Neither the Vancouver Police Department nor B.C. Emergency Health Services could confirm someone died of an overdose Tuesday. 

"We need to bring an end to the government being a drug dealer, quite frankly," Rustad says, referring to the NDP's prescription opioid program, also called safe supply, which the Conservatives say is keeping people in the cycle of addiction. 

Eby admitted that the NDP government had to change course when it came to decriminalization, which resulted in a recriminalization of drug use in public spaces earlier this year. 

The NDP leader attacked Rustad for changing his position on safe consumption sites, which Rustad has called "drug dens." 

WATCH | Key moments from Tuesday's televised debate:

Rustad initially said he would close all safe consumption sites and replace them with treatment intake centres. On Tuesday, he said safe consumption sites can stay open as long as they're acting as a "gateway to treatment."

"It's not OK to play politics with it, John," said Eby. "It's not OK to say to one community, 'We're going to close the overdose prevention sites, we're going to close the drug dens' ... and then you said we're going to change the name."

Rustad pointed to arrests made this month at a safe consumption site in Nanaimo, saying "we have actually seen people arrested and distributing drugs in those facilities. These sorts of things need to be shut down when that happens."