Nanaimo CSOs - City Safety or Downloaded Healthcare?

 

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 No shade on CSOs: they are doing hard, often dangerous work. But Nanaimo residents deserve honesty about what we are paying for.

A recent Discourse CSO ride along story leans into the softer “relationship and de-escalation” narrative and even repeats the line that CSOs “are not first responders.” Okay - except the City’s own reporting says CSOs delivered 1,292 doses of naloxone in 2024 and performed CPR 31 times, often holding the line until emergency responders arrive. That is first-response medicine in practice, whatever we call it.

If we are building a municipal overdose-response unit (new vehicles, medical gear, expanding budgets), then the province should be at the table funding it - because emergency health response is a provincial responsibility. At minimum, the City should publish a simple split: how much CSO time and money is “city property/social disorder/bylaw,” and how much is “health response.”

Because right now it looks like Nanaimo taxpayers are paying twice - once through provincial health spending, and again through property taxes - to cover a system that isn’t keeping up.

 “Nanaimo taxpayers did not vote to run a provincial overflow ward out of City Hall. If CSOs are doing emergency medicine, Victoria pays - period.”