The provincial government has been intimately aware of the unravelling state of the Baldy Hughes Therapeutic Community during the full duration of the issue, said Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety Shirley Bond.
When BC Housing (a division of Rich Coleman's Ministry of Energy and Mines) stepped in on Thursday and confiscated the premises from its board of directors, it was no surprise to Coleman or herself, she told The Citizen.
"No one decides the government is going to be involved in running the day-to-day operation of a health facility just overnight," she said. "There has been work underway on the Baldy Hughes initiative constantly."
As to why the public was not made aware of the government's level of concern, despite a groundswell of internal protest over the last four months, and a corresponding curtain of silence to Citizen inquiries around the board of directors in that same time frame, Bond was blunt.
"There have been ongoing discussions between myself and minister Coleman," she said. "I'm not going to have those discussions on the front page of a newspaper."
The one issue of paramount concern within government, she said, was not the personalities involved in the running of a facility, it was the many lives that hang in the balance at the client level.
The past, current and future residents of the Baldy Hughes facility were, she said, "deserving of one goal and one goal only, and that is an appropriate and sustainable treatment model."
That model was something the addictions centre was becoming famous for until four months ago when the dynamics of the facility took a turn for the worse.
Bond said she could not speculate on the reasons for that turn or the operational future of the facility. That is primarily in the hands of BC Housing staff who, she said, are fully and functionally familiar with the place and its programs.
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