VANCOUVER -- The horrid conditions in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside
reflect a failure of politicians over the past decade to stay focused
on the problems, allowing conditions to worsen, say the three
architects of a landmark agreement in 2000 that was expected to
transform the neighbourhood. Former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen
forged an alliance at that time with former federal Liberal cabinet
minister Hedy Fry and former provincial NDP cabinet minister Jenny
Kwan to turn the Downtown Eastside into a safe, healthy community
with jobs for local residents. They set out a comprehensive approach
called the Vancouver Agreement to respond to drug addiction, mental
illness, homelessness and the faltering local economy.

But they say the neighbourhood is now worse off, mostly as a result
of the failure of federal, provincial and municipal governments over
the past decade to keep the issue as a top priority.

"At any moment, we [politicians] worry about what the press is
saying," said Mr. Owen, who retired from politics in 2002.

"We worry about tomorrow's media coverage and the next election. It
just annoys the hell out of me," Mr. Owen said.

"Most politicians want to reinvent the wheel, come up with a new idea
. new names, new policies, new programs, and let's go back to wicket
one," he said in a recent interview. "We should have just kept going
and it did not happen."

Dr. Fry, who was a secretary of state in the federal cabinet from
1996 to 2002, said the Vancouver Agreement "fell by the wayside" as
governments changed over the years.

"You need passionate people who are prepared to be hands-on," she
said. "That passion was not there any more. It slid, and people slid
back to doing their own things," she said in a separate interview.
"The momentum was lost. ... Everybody had other things they were
doing and that was not at the top of the agenda."

Ms. Kwan, a provincial cabinet minister from 1998 to 2001, said the
agreement was abandoned after Gordon Campbell's Liberals replaced the
provincial NDP government in 2001.

She recalled, as the cabinet minister responsible for the agreement,
telling her staff about the importance of the issue. "My deputy
[minister] had regular meetings with other deputies in other
ministries to bring them on board," she said. "And then the
politicians would be driving at it at the [cabinet] table. All that
disappeared after 2001."

The Liberals cut income assistance and cancelled housing programs
months after their election victory, she said. The federal
Conservative government, which has been in office since 2006, has
tried to close down the safe-injection site that opened in 2003. The
site was considered to be an essential part of health measures
included in the Vancouver Agreement, she said.

"So everyone's efforts are now going into fighting those fights all
over again, instead of thinking, 'what are the next steps? What is
the continuum of service to make this plan comprehensive and fully in
place?' " Ms. Kwan said.

"We're a step back from where we were when we first got the Vancouver
Agreement in place, both on the homelessness, housing front, the
harm-reduction front and the co-ordination [among levels of
government and government departments] front," Ms. Kwan said.

However, with the world coming to Vancouver in less than 12 months
for the 2010 Olympics, the conditions in the Downtown Eastside have
once again moved to the top of the agenda. The low-income
neighbourhood is the poorest in the country and accounts for a
disproportionately high percentage of the city's intravenous drug
users, mental-illness cases, homeless and jobless.

The federal, provincial and municipal governments and dozens of
non-profit community groups provide services in the Downtown
Eastside, but no one keeps track of spending in the neighbourhood. A
Globe and Mail investigation for the first time tallied how much
public and private money has been poured into the area since 2000.
Based on available sources, The Globe estimated more than
$1.4-billion has gone into the neighbourhood during this decade.

Reflecting on the dismal results of the Vancouver Agreement, Mr. Owen
recalled phoning his Conservative Party friends last September in
search of support for a national program based on the agreement.

Mr. Owen envisioned a co-ordinated federal-provincial arrangement
similar to the Vancouver Agreement. "I was saying, look, we've got a
national problem in Canada, from Victoria to St. John's,
Newfoundland," he said. "We got people who are mentally ill that
should be back in an institution, to get balanced on their meds
again; we have drug addicts; we have homeless and jobless right
across the country."

But Mr. Owen said he got nowhere. He could not even persuade the
federal government to contribute $200,000 to a new drug-treatment
centre for boys and girls that opened earlier this year, despite
Conservative Party campaign promises to support treatment and
prevention over harm reduction.

"It was just bizarre. There's no common sense," a frustrated Mr. Owen
said. "All they worry about in Ottawa is tomorrow's newspaper story
and the next election. There are no long-term things."