Councillors Dale Bass (pictured), Sadie Hunter, and Kathy Sinclair presented the notice of motion to ask the federal government to declare the overdose crisis a national public health emergency. (Image Credit: Kent Simmonds / CFJC Today)

By Dylana Kneeshaw

OPIOID CRISIS

Kamloops council to Trudeau government: deem overdose crisis a national public health emergency

Dec 15, 2020 | 4:17 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops city council will put pen to paper and formally request that the federal government declare the overdose crisis a national public health emergency.

Councillors Dale Bass, Sadie Hunter and Kathy Sinclair brought forward the motion, which passed at Tuesday’s (Dec. 15) council session.

“Fundamentally, they’re words on a piece of paper,” notes Bass, “but if we could just get all municipalities or most municipalities across the country to put similar words on a piece of paper and ship them all off to Ottawa, perhaps we could convince the federal government to declare this a national public health crisis and to help fund it just as it is funding the COVID-19 fight.”

Preventing future overdose fatalities and ultimately improving services to help people with active addictions, recovering or at-risk of an overdose will require more funding for health authorities. In a state of national public health emergency, Bass says the crisis could be treated with the level of urgency it needs.

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“It would be nice to see the federal government help the provincial governments across the country in increasing the funding to agencies that are dealing with this.”

According to data from the B.C Coroners Service, in October alone there were 162 illicit drug overdose deaths in the province.

Sandra Tully of Moms Stop the Harm in Kamloops says families who have lost someone to an overdose are feeling the impact of the crisis and taxpayers are also taking a financial hit.

“We are carrying, right now, the brunt of the costs of this,” she says. “There’s a cost to our health care, there’s a cost to our paramedics, our frontline workers — all of these things. And I don’t know how much longer municipalities can sustain the costs.”

Seeing the urgency the federal government is using to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Tully and other advocates for overdose prevention say they want a similar response.

“The movement that they’ve made, it just shows to me that it is possible for them to move quickly when they recognize a health crisis,” says Tully. “My wish is that they would move as quickly on the opioid crisis.”

It is a national issue without a quick solution, but Bass says the request from Kamloops’ mayor and council will be one step towards putting an end to overdose fatalities.

“This is an issue that is very close to me,” she says. “Actually today is the birthday of my son’s best friend who died from an opioid overdose a few years ago. So we’re dealing with his grief today again. And it makes me think of all the moms who I’ve met who have lost children to this horrific thing.”