Time for funding on home and mental health care
For immediate release
January 30, 2017

VICTORIA B.C. – Home care and mental health are at a crisis point in B.C. and the provincial government continues to play politics with the wellbeing of British Columbians.

“The federal government has put new money on the table for mental health services and home health care,” said Andrew Weaver, MLA for Oak Bay – Gordon Head. “Rather than sitting down and negotiating a deal like Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the three territories have, British Columbia is watching the health care money be given away.”

Since Health Accord negotiations between the provinces and federal government broke down in December, four other provinces and three territories have since returned to the table and have reached bilateral funding agreements. Last week, Saskatchewan became the fourth province to reach a bilateral deal with the federal government on health care transfers. British Columbia has not resumed negotiations.

“Island Health is struggling with a budget deficit of between $10-million and $12-million dollars and our hospitals, designed to deal with acute care, are being used inefficiently for chronic care for which the federal home care money is targeted,” said Weaver, Leader of the B.C. Green Party.

“We are struggling to respond reactively to the fentanyl crisis, an approach that has come with a staggeringly horrific human cost. We need to be proactively supporting mental health and recovery services for which, once again, Federal money is already being offered.”

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Media contact
Mat Wright, Press Secretary
+1 250-216-3382 | mat.wright@leg.bc.ca

During our tour today, Jonina Campbell, the BC Green candidate for New Westminster in the upcoming provincial election, and I were profoundly moved by what we experienced and the stories we heard. As Jonina noted in the statement we released after our tour (reproduced below), we witnessed “a grassroots effort of downtown eastside community members who have come together, because it is their friends and family who are suffering and dying.”

Thank you to Sarah Blyth, who is working with the Overdose Prevention Society, for taking the time to tour us around the downtown east side and educating us on the overdose crisis.

Later in the day I appeared on CBC’s On the Coast (starting at the 52:48 mark) in an attempt to convey what we learned from our visit.

Media Statement

As I sat down to write this article, with a dozen tabs open to fentanyl-related stories and studies, a new headline made its way to the front page and it hit me like a tonne of bricks. “Overdose deaths involving fentanyl fill Vancouver morgues to capacity.” One life lost is heartbreaking; the scale of this emergency can hardly be articulated in a way that respects and represents the grief felt around B.C.

The situation in Vancouver is particularly dire, but fentanyl-related overdoses are happening all over the province and our riding is no exception. The reach and magnitude of this crisis has been tragic. The fact that it has only continued to escalate since the B.C. Ministry of Health declared it a public health emergency on April 14 is horrific in its own right.

Also in the news at the time of writing is an article in the Vancouver Sun that reads “the B.C. government is almost doubling its advertising spending [to $15 million] five months before the provincial election, but the minister responsible says it’s to raise awareness of the fentanyl overdose crisis…”

People are dying. We need to help them, not make ads about them.

In 2009 when H1N1 hit B.C., the province put $80 million towards fighting the flu that killed 57 people. Illicit drug overdoses have killed 622 people in the first 10 months of this year, surpassing car crash fatalities to become the leading non-natural cause of death in B.C.

By their own, arguably generous, estimate the provincial government has spent $15 million to prevent and respond to overdoses. Yet even their plan to create 500 new addiction treatment spaces by 2017, a promise made by the premier in the 2013 election, remains unmet. So far only 220 new spaces have become available. And during the same period, the number of substance-abuse treatment beds for young people has dropped 25 per cent to just 89.

The government’s resources thus far have largely been focused on collecting data and distributing naloxone kits, a medication that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. They are important initiatives, to be sure, but they are reactionary. They kick in when someone is already in the throes of an overdose. If we want to get ahead of this crisis, we need to step in with a comprehensive plan to support people before they are that close to dying.

Reports released by researchers with the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research of B.C. (CARBC) provide evidence of the inadequacy of government responses to this emergency, but they also detail a path forward.

For Victoria specifically, they write that by delaying the implementation of supervised consumption services – despite the indications of a growing overdose epidemic and widespread reports of washrooms in social service agencies being used as unofficial and unsupervised injection sites – the province is ignoring the evidence.

As Dr. Bruce Wallace and Dr. Bernie Pauly, researchers at CARBC and faculty members at UVic, wrote in the Globe and Mail, “What is needed is a more comprehensive approach.

“This should include supervised consumption as well as increased access to treatment and opiate-substitution therapy. There is a wealth of evidence that supports the effectiveness of supervised consumption services in preventing overdoses, preventing the transmission of blood-borne disease and increasing access to referrals to treatment and opiate substation therapy.”

Last week Island Health finished the public consultation phase of their application to open a supervised consumption site in Victoria. I hope you will join me in imploring the provincial government to do everything in its jurisdictional power to support this process along, as well as follow CARBC’s recommendations to increase the number addiction-treatment facilities.

Media Release: November 16th, 2016
Weaver statement on the need for BC poverty reduction strategy
For Immediate Release

Victoria, B.C. – The combination of a low minimum wage, high cost of living, inadequate social assistance, and lack of well-paying jobs has resulted in widespread poverty across British Columbia – the only province without a poverty reduction strategy.

Peter Fassbender, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, recently said he didn’t see the need for a poverty reduction strategy.

“It is outrageous. Comments like these show how out of touch the B.C. Liberals are with the issues facing everyday British Columbians,” said Andrew Weaver, Leader of the B.C. Green Party. “They are more interested in building an economy that  supports their corporate donors than they are in building one that supports the British Columbians that they were elected to represent.”

“The B.C. Liberals have spent 16 years claiming they need to grow the economy before they can deal with poverty. Our economy has grown, and yet British Columbia continues to have one of the highest poverty rates in Canada. Their trickle-down approach to poverty reduction is not working and they have no plan to fix it,” said Weaver, the MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

The BC Liberals’ jobs plan does not come close to addressing poverty in BC. 55,000 jobs have been created since last October, but 75% of these jobs (41,000) are part-time positions.

“The creation of part-time precarious work does not amount to a poverty reduction strategy and it does nothing to help struggling families in B.C.”

Food bank use is at an all-time high in BC: 103,400 people used food banks in March 2016, according to Food Banks Canada’s annual HungerCount report. Children made up almost a third of that number. This makes 2016 the 3rd year in a row that food bank use has increased. Charities are left with the responsibility to fill the gaps left by government inaction: people are relying on charities to meet their essential needs for food, clothing, and shelter.

“I personally know of a growing number of students who use food banks because they can’t afford to live,” said Weaver.

The unprecedented rate of food bank use in BC today speaks to the utter failure of the BC Liberals to promote economic growth in a way that serves British Columbians, and not just corporations. BC has one of the highest levels of poverty in the country, with between 11-16% of adults and 16-20% of children living in poverty, depending on the measure used.

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Media Contact
Mat Wright – Press Secretary, Andrew Weaver MLA
1 250 216 3382
mat.wright@leg.bc.ca