Here's one early prediction for 2013: city council will go by the book, approve an amendment to the Official Community Plan and then a zoning change to allow a 30-bed women's rehab facility to go ahead on Leslie Road. The area residents will still be upset, the lawyers will still get paid and the Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women will still open its doors in the former Haldi Road elementary school and start helping addicted, disadvantaged women get their lives back on track.
It's cruelly ironic that application for the zoning change and the Official Community Plan went before city council on the same day that Wally Oppal presented his exhaustive 1,448-page report on the failures that led to Robert Pickton murdering as many as 49 women on his Port Coquitlam farm.
While Oppal was making an impassioned plea Monday for communities to do more to save poor, drug-addicted sex workers, rehab centre opponents were getting ready to fight on against a facility that would do exactly that from being opened in their neighbourhood.
"Put yourself in the shoes of one of the missing and murdered women and think how it would feel if you were dismissed, considered unworthy of attention by the majority of the people in your city," Oppal said. "What if you were made to feel invisible, unworthy?"
Sadly, too many Haldi Road residents have made their answers to Oppal's plea abundantly clear. Those women should remain invisible and they are not worthy of breathing Leslie Road air while attempting to build a better, more meaningful life.
Some opponents to this project have come at it from a different angle. While they recognize that the rehab centre is a needed development in Prince George and they might even admit that the the former school in the Haldi Road neighbourhood is a smart location for it, they trot out political and financial conspiracies.
Marshall Smith is a talented political operative who orchestrated Shari Green's election to the mayor's chair. Green's campaign outraised, outspent and outhustled incumbent mayor Dan Rogers, in part because of Smith's efforts. Smith has also built a career working with and lifting up disadvantaged adults. When he saw an opportunity at Haldi Road, he approached powerful and wealthy players in the community and asked them to support his plan.
The Northern Supportive Recovery Society was formed, with members of the medical and social work community signing on in support and they have continued to stand by the merits of this project. Property owner Craig Wood could have invested in numerous other ventures that would have been far more lucrative and far less frustrating but he has also stood by this project.
So, no, this rehab centre is not some scheme to financially reward political backers. Rather it is the combined and sustained effort of smart, hard-working and successful citizens to create a facility that will save lives.
"There was an institutional, systemic bias against the women. ... They were poor, they were aboriginal, they were drug addicted and they were not taken seriously," Oppal told reporters after distributing copies of his report.
It's time to lay that bias aside in Prince George, whether it's against poor aboriginal women or wealthy, well-connected do-gooders. It's also time to stop playing legal games with municipal bylaws around zoning and planning documents.
Assessing this project on its community and social value, the Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women is long overdue in Prince George and the former school on Leslie Road is the perfect location for it.
