FIRST READING: Official Vancouver World Cup guide includes tips on how to do illicit drugs

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Here again, the New York FIFA guide did not feel the need to mention any of this, including only information about accommodation and transportation, as well as marketing bluster.  

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“From world-class entertainment to iconic landmarks and rich cultural experiences, this is more than a tournament, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime celebration,” it reads.

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Toronto, the other Canadian host city, also avoids any mention of how to do illicit drugs on its official FIFA website, which reads more like a tourism brochure. The only reference to illegal drugs is in a list of “prohibited items” allowed at sanctioned viewing sites.

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Vancouver is hosting seven matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, all of them at B.C. Place, a venue that’s only a 15-minute walk from the Downtown Eastside, long the core of the city’s drug addiction problem.

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With an estimated 350,000 visitors coming to the city for the matches, some of them have indeed been surprised at the city’s level of open-air drug use and street disorder.  

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In a viral social media post from this week, two U.S. visitors in Vancouver for the World Cup praised the sushi and the “beautiful, beautiful stadium,” but said the aspect of the city they would remember most is the “drug zombies walking all over the place.”

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Just before World Cup visitors began arriving in the city, in fact, Global News broadcast a profile about how Destination Vancouver, the city’s official tourism marketer, was increasingly encountering visitors shocked at the extent of the city’s street disorder.

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“Street upon street of homeless people who were clearly under the influence of what was probably fentanyl and other drugs. Felt very, very unsafe, always looking over your shoulder, drugs openly being consumed,” read one visitor comment.

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“Really glad to leave this place and will not be going back, has put me off to going to any other city in Canada,” read another.

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IN OTHER NEWS

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A new Leger poll shows yet another massive lead for the Liberals. Perhaps more importantly, it shows that both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois remain at historic lows. In fact, if an election were held tomorrow with these numbers, both the NDP and the Bloc would simultaneously chart the worst results in their respective histories. Former Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper was prime minister for nine years despite poll numbers that were never all that different from what the Conservatives are posting now. But he benefited from a political mix in which Liberal support was continually sapped by strong support for third and fourth parties. (Leger)

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s condo “bailout” has continued to attract new critics, including from developers themselves.

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It was almost a week ago that Carney, alongside B.C. Premier David Eby, announced a federal plan to buy up 2,200 vacant condos and turn them into “affordable housing.”

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Carney’s political critics on both the left and right immediately slammed the plan as a sop to developers, as builders will be receiving artificially inflated prices for units that are now worth considerably less given a recent drop in Vancouver condo prices.

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And Carney himself seemed to acknowledge this, saying his measure would save developers from having to sell “at a loss.”

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But the developers themselves are balking as well.

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The Urban Development Institute has been one of Canada’s main developer lobby groups since the 1970s.

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And in a Wednesday public letter their president Michael Drummond said he was “struggling” with a plan that ignores “fundamental economic barriers” to new development in favour of buying “2,200 unsold condos that are already built.”

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“No one in the development or allied sectors advocated for that. And with no details yet on eligibility, affordability, valuation, or project selection, the vacuum is filling with speculation that helps no one working to solve B.C.’s cost of delivery crisis,” he wrote.

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In a Thursday press conference, Carney suggested the whole problem was one of messaging.

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“I don’t think we’ve done, myself included, a particularly good job of rolling this out and explaining exactly what it is,” he said.

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