B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad arrives for the televised leaders' debate in Vancouver on Oct. 8.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
British Columbia’s Conservatives have pledged to combat the province’s toxic-drug crisis by expanding access to treatment and recovery services, while scrapping some harm-reduction policies introduced under the incumbent NDP.
However, many of the Conservatives’ promises closely mirror NDP initiatives already underway, and the Green Party and health experts criticize the plan as offering populist platitudes for a complex crisis with no simple solutions.
Conservative Leader John Rustad announced his plan Tuesday on the grounds of the Riverview Hospital, which shuttered in 2012 during a move to deinstitutionalize people with mental illnesses in favour of treating them in community settings. A Conservative government would redevelop the site to be a centre for excellence in mental-health-and-addictions recovery, he said. The land is currently the subject of a land-title claim by the Kwikwetlem First Nation.
As well, Mr. Rustad said his party would reduce wait times for voluntary addiction treatment, and introduce maximum wait-time standards for mental-health care. In 2022/23, the median number of days between a client referral and the start of bed-based treatment and recovery service was 31.25, according to the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions.
The Globe and Mail reported in June about detox beds routinely sitting empty – resulting in long wait times and high drop-out rates – because of a shortage of addiction-trained physicians and nurses to staff them. The NDP in 2022 launched a health-human resources strategy to recruit, retain and train health care workers. Mr. Rustad acknowledged Tuesday that a recruitment plan would be needed.
The Conservatives would also end drug decriminalization, which “is obviously not working,” and stop drug legalization, Mr. Rustad said. B.C.’s pilot to remove criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of certain illicit drugs effectively ended in May – just more than one year into a three-year trial – when Ottawa approved the province’s request to recriminalize possession everywhere except private residences and overdose-prevention and drug-checking sites. No illicit drugs were ever made “legal.”
Former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe, who recently threw her support behind the Green Party, said decriminalization has not worsened drug problems in the province, and that what people are dying from is a highly toxic and volatile drug supply.
“The goal of decriminalization is to encourage people to seek help with health challenges related to drug use without fear of arrest and criminal penalties,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Globe. “Unfortunately, the health services necessary to support those wanting to move away from drug use are sparse and difficult to access.”
The Conservatives would also end the province’s prescribed alternatives program, which aims to lessen or sever a person’s reliance on the toxic, illicit drug supply by providing them with pharmaceutical alternatives, an intervention commonly referred to as “safer supply.” As of August, 3,945 people were prescribed an alternative, most of whom received an opioid.
In the policy announced Tuesday, Mr. Rustad appeared to waffle on his position on supervised consumption sites, the first of which opened in B.C. more than 20 years ago and whose right to operate has been upheld by a Supreme Court of Canada ruling.
After a Sept. 22 announcement that his party would shut down “every single drug-den injection site” in the suburb of Richmond – where there are no supervised consumption sites – Mr. Rustad expanded that promise to include every such site in the province. But the Conservative Leader has now walked that back, saying that some sites may have to exist “as a temporary and emergency measure” in his latest announcement.
“Certainly over the short term, as we’re building out recovery and treatment, there will need to be some bridging that will be going on,” he said, adding that there would be strict standards in place and that they must link people to recovery.
Mr. Rustad said his party would also expand involuntary treatment, expand availability of the nasal spray version of the opioid-overdose reversal medication naloxone and create a virtual opioid dependency program – all of which are measures the NDP recently announced as well.
More than 15,000 people in B.C. have died from illicit drugs since 2016, the year a public-health emergency was declared. The BC Coroners Service estimates that around 225,000 people in the province use illicit drugs, and that about 100,000 have an opioid use disorder.
Former provincial health officer Perry Kendall said the Conservative plan offered “very simplistic answers to very complex questions.”
He cited as examples the enormous challenges in hiring qualified nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physicians to work in addictions, and the fact that most people who die from overdoses are not daily users, which has implications for what “treatment” means.
As well, there are no evidence-based standards for treatment and recovery services – a point recently highlighted by the Greens – and no plan for people after involuntary treatment, Dr. Kendall said.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, who announced her party’s plan for the drug crisis in September, said the Conservative plan “plays on people’s fears and frustrations” but won’t fix anything.
“There is no meaningful engagement with the root causes of B.C.’s intersecting crises: rising homelessness, untreated mental-health issues, or the deadly toxic drug supply killing six people every day,” she said in a statement Tuesday.