(Ottawa) More than a year after the federal government’s expert panel recommended creating a safe supply of substances to reduce people’s addiction to toxic drugs, the government hasn’t created a system to source them .
Federal Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett told a recent parliamentary committee hearing that the government is developing a plan to deal with the opioid crisis.
But it was less specific about the steps it takes to ensure a safe supply.
“I clearly think they don’t have a plan for a secure supply,” NDP MP Gord Johns said in an interview.
Mr. Johns, the party’s critic for mental health and harm reduction, said Mr.me Bennett was vague about how she would provide a safe supply.
According to the June 2021 recommendations from Health Canada’s Substance Use Expert Panel, a regulated and safe supply of opioids would allow people to move away from the unregulated and highly dangerous street supply.
Procurement Minister Filomena Tassi told a House of Commons committee in May that she would make procurement decisions based on requests from Health Canada and that she is working with provinces and territories through the Minister of Health.
At a Commons health committee meeting in June, Mr Johns asked Minister Bennett what steps she was taking to increase supply.
She replied that although the government has approved diacetylmorphine, or heroin injection, as a new treatment option for people with severe opioid use disorders, “the Pharmascience company is not preparing to produce it”. .
She mentioned other controlled substances such as Dilaudid and fentanyl powder, but said doctors should be able to prescribe them.
Mr. Johns blamed Mr.me Bennett for not “reaching out to ask the Minister of Supply to secure a safe supply.” He argues that the government needs to look at a secure supply model that has few barriers for people who need it.
Referring to the government’s work to acquire COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, Johns asked why it was not doing the same for an opioid supply.
“It’s because it lacks political will, it’s not their priority, and they lack courage,” criticizes the New Democrat.
Minister Bennett’s office did not directly respond to a question about whether she and Filomena Tassi were working together to secure a safe supply of opioids.
“Issuing contracts for a safer supply of opioids is primarily a provincial and territorial responsibility,” said Ms.me Bennett in a recent statement.
Health Canada is currently supporting 17 safer supply projects in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, for a total investment of over $63 million, Minister Bennett’s office said.
A solution that would save lives
The executive director of the Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs (CAPUD), Natasha Touesnard, said she doesn’t think the government offering a safe supply only through pilot programs is an effective model because People who use drugs will have unequal opportunities for services depending on where they live.
The government’s slow action on safe supply shows it does not value the lives of people who use drugs, argues Ms.me Touesnard, who was co-chair of the expert group. She asked why the government was not acting on the recommendations of its own task force.
“Why are we still stagnating in this crisis? We are going through vicarious trauma, despair, the loss of people we love every day, and it is so traumatic for our community not to have the support of the government to bring about change,” she said, adding that this safe supply would save lives and reduce other types of overdose harms.
“It’s a waste of everyone’s time to sit down at the table and have these conversations and then put them on a shelf to collect data,” said Ms.me Touesnard.
She believes it would also be fiscally irresponsible to stay the course, with taxpayers bearing the health costs of those who use illegal toxic drugs.
The expert task force confirmed in its report last year that there is an “urgent need” for a safe supply to deal with the overdose crisis.
He recommended that a committee of experts be struck to lead the design of a “national safer supply program” for the roughly one million Canadians he says are at risk of dying from drug toxicity.
Since 2016, more than 29,000 Canadians have died of apparent opioid-related causes, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Those deaths have increased dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and death rates have remained high since then, the agency reported in June.
Mme Touesnard repeated a frequent observation made in the community affected by the crisis: “it looks like they are talking to us, we are dying”.
This dispatch was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta Exchanges and The Canadian Press for the news.
