Andrew Leavens, front left, and Carl Gladue, right, carry an empty coffin during a march organized by the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) to mark International Overdose Awareness Day, in Vancouver on Aug. 31, 2023.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Kennedy Stewart was Vancouver’s mayor from 2018 to 2022 and before that was an NDP MP from 2011 to 2018. He currently is an associate professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy.
Over the past decade, successive British Columbia governments have seen thousands of people die from toxic drugs on their watch. Judging from the promises made in this election campaign, the carnage is likely to worsen. B.C. NDP Premier David Eby has already restricted his government’s drug decriminalization pilot program where Conservative Party leader John Rustad promises to end decriminalization and safer-supply programs and shut down all supervised consumption sites.
We need to remove politics from this issue if we are going to make progress, and can do so by holding a public inquiry headed by a chief commissioner who is unanimously approved by all political parties and empowered with a broad mandate to draft a plan to reduce the death rate by half within two years.
B.C.’s toxic drug death catastrophe began under Christy Clark’s B.C. Liberal government, in which Conservative Leader John Rustad served as a key minister. It continued under NDP premiers John Horgan and David Eby. The scale and severity of the tragedy is truly staggering. The coroner’s office estimates over 225,000 British Columbians use unregulated drugs (about the same number of people who live in Burnaby, B.C.) with over 16,000 people (the population of Nelson, B.C.) now dead from drug poisoning. Emergency services respond to more than 100 overdose-related calls per day with friends, family and peers saving many more lives without the help of professionals.
The toll of all these overdoses and deaths is devastating. People are living their final hours in agony. Overdose survivors experience long-term health issues, including brain injury. Grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends and neighbours are left to deal with the death and destruction. First responders and the medical community are burning out. The economic impacts of this crisis are also high. One Canadian Medical Association Journal article estimates drug poisonings cost B.C. taxpayers $109-million in direct health care costs and $704-million in indirect costs in 2016 alone, which can only be higher now that the crisis is entrenched.
British Columbia has tried to respond, starting with the B.C. Liberal government declaring a state of emergency in 2016. Seventeen newly established youth counselling centres provided services to approximately 16,000 young people, while 1,447 youth received support from integrated child and youth teams across 20 school districts.
The province has made available more than 2,500 substance-use treatment spaces, and drug-checking services are now accessible at 120 locations. Additionally, 48 supervised consumption sites receive around 77,000 visits each month. Nearly 2.5 million naloxone kits have been distributed and approximately 25,000 people receive treatments every month to reduce opioid cravings. Last year, around 4,000 people were prescribed alternatives, such as slow-release fentanyl patches.
I was very proud to lead the drive to decriminalize small amounts of illicit drugs while serving as the mayor of Vancouver, seeking new ways to save lives after a member of my family died from taking a poisoned substance. There is clear evidence that decriminalization improved the lives of drug users and their loved ones. For example, Health Canada reports a 76-per-cent decrease in the number of possession offences, a 95-per-cent drop in drug seizures and a substantive increase in drug users accessing overdose prevention sites and drug-testing facilities. But we’ll never know how effective the policy might have been.
Shameful campaigns of the worst kind mounted to gain political advantage cowed the Eby government into greatly restricting decriminalization, despite it being formulated and supported by experts such as Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. The step back on decriminalization indicates evidence-based decision-making has been swamped by fearmongering on this critical issue. Policy promises by both the incumbent New Democrats and the Conservatives to incarcerate hundreds of people and force medications into their bodies against their will further demonstrate how the best medical and public safety advice has fallen victim to hysteria.
As the opportunity for rational discussions about how to save people from toxic drugs has vanished, whoever forms government in October needs to move this discussion to a safe place. Fortunately, B.C. has a strong history in this area. We have in the past conducted dozens of impactful commissions and inquiries about critical issues. We have made decisions using the Recall and Initiative Act and even entrusted the work of exploring electoral reform to North America’s first citizens’ assembly.
We need to draw on these unique past practices to tackle the issue of toxic drug deaths. That’s why I suggest forming an arm’s-length public inquiry. The inquiry would look much like the foreign interference commission currently under way in Ottawa and headed by Quebec Court of Appeal judge Marie-Josée Hogue, whose appointment was approved through a unanimous House of Commons vote. This stands in stark contrast to a previous attempt to examine foreign interference that seemed doomed to fail owing to Prime Minister Trudeau’s appointment of former governor-general David Johnston to head the investigation without getting formal agreement from opposition parties.
Imagine the relief across the province if Mr. Eby’s or Mr. Rustad’s first order of business after forming a new government was to secure a unanimous vote for the appointment of a chief commissioner with a mandate to deliver a plan to save hundreds of people every year from horrible deaths. This is what we now need to do to solve this crisis for which six British Columbians pay for with their lives every day.