B.C. MLA Josie Osborne speaks at the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, in North Vancouver, B.C., on June 15, 2023. British Columbia’s new health minister says she’s aiming for more treatment beds and fewer deaths in a revamped approach to the province’s drug overdose crisis, which sees the New Democrat government drop a stand alone ministry advocates say did not have “teeth.” THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Dirk Meissner The Canadian Press Staff Contact Published Nov. 25, 2024
British Columbia’s new health minister says she’s aiming for more treatment beds and fewer deaths in a revamped approach to the province’s drug overdose crisis.
It comes after David Eby’s newly elected government eliminated the stand-alone Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, which advocates say had no “teeth.”
The former ministry was created in 2017 to provide co-ordinated responses to the toxic drug crisis, which has killed more than 15,000 people in the past eight years, but it has now been absorbed into the Health Ministry.
“Certainly, I really do think the time is right to fold the ministry back into the Ministry of Health,” said Josie Osborne, who was appointed health minister last week, replacing former minister Adrian Dix.
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“I think we’re in a much better position to expedite action and decision making,” Osborne said in an interview. “Now is the time to bring that together. The premier’s been very clear he expects an all-of-government approach to this.”
The B.C. Coroners Service says 1,749 people have died of toxic drug overdoses so far this year. Last year the service reported 2,551 overdose deaths, the most ever recorded in a single year in the province.
“We are going to do everything possible that we can to reduce the number of deaths and the impacts on people and families,” Osborne said. “This is one of the toughest challenges our government, our society, that B.C. faces and one of our government’s top priorities. The key here is helping people and doing everything we can from all different approaches to reduce the number of deaths and to help people recover and be well.”
B.C. drug policy advocates who are calling on the government to support more safe supply and drug decriminalization policy initiatives say they will watch for signs that the changes, and Osborne’s appointment, result in shifts in direction and approaches.
“It’s good because the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions wasn’t ever really set up to succeed,” said DJ Larkin, executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and an adjunct professor at the faculty of health sciences at Simon Fraser University.
“It didn’t have the budget or the authority to do what needed to happen and it set expectations they couldn’t meet,” Larkin said. “It didn’t have the teeth. That sets up people for disappointment because they gather the data. They get the expert input. They get the ideas but they didn’t have the teeth to make it happen.”
