{"id":22582,"date":"2026-04-10T11:07:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugpolicy.ca\/?p=22582"},"modified":"2026-04-10T11:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:24:10","slug":"10-years-in-crisis-bc-decade-long-public-health-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drugpolicy.ca\/fr\/10-years-in-crisis-bc-decade-long-public-health-emergency\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Years in Crisis: B.C.\u2019s Decade-Long Public Health Emergency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

April 14, 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the declaration of a public health emergency in the province of B.C. following an unprecedented increase in drug-related harms.<\/strong>1<\/a><\/sup> Then provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall \u201cserved notice under the Public Health Act to exercise emergency powers\u201d after 76 deaths in January 2016, which at the time was the largest number of deaths in a single month since at least 2007.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since that date, at least 18,000 people have died from unregulated drugs in the province, and more than 50,000 from opioids and\/or stimulants across Canada.3<\/a><\/sup> 4<\/a><\/sup> This crisis is defined first by staggering and ongoing loss of life. People who use drugs and their families have borne its deepest harms: death, grief, ongoing suffering, and life-altering brain injury. Frontline workers who have dedicated their lives to this work also carry deep and lasting harms, including trauma, family disruption, inadequate mental health support, and the burden of working in flawed systems that leave them responding to preventable suffering without the needed tools and resources. Communities have been left to carry these effects, while public systems face significant strain through rising hospitalizations, emergency medical services calls, and pressure across health and social services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though this is a B.C. anniversary, the issue is national.<\/strong> Since B.C.\u2019s declaration, Alberta declared a public health crisis in 2017<\/a>, the Yukon declared a substance use health emergency in 2022<\/a>, and numerous First Nations governments and councils declared related states of emergency (including but not limited to Carcross\/Tagish First Nation, Dene Tha\u2019 First Nation, Athabasca Tribal Council, Sipekne\u2019katik First Nation, Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, and Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation). Ten years after B.C.\u2019s declaration, the loss and grief continue in communities across the country, made worse by stigma, misinformation and politicization.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In B.C., declaring a public health emergency allowed for medical health officers to collect and analyze more detailed, real-time information on both fatal and non-fatal overdoses across the health system.5<\/a><\/sup> Previously, limited information on overdoses was only reported if someone died. The declaration allowed medical health officers to collect information related to any overdose in the province where emergency personnel or health care workers respond, including location, the drugs used, and how they were taken. The expanded authority connected to the emergency declaration was conferred by the province\u2019s Public Health Act. This is an important distinction between B.C.\u2019s declaration and, for example, the Yukon\u2019s, which was largely symbolic, lacking authority tied to specific legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the authority of the emergency declaration, then Health Minister Terry Lake issued ministerial order 488\/2016<\/a> in December 2016,<\/strong> ordering Emergency Health Services and the regional health boards to provide overdose prevention services \u201cin any place there is a need for these services, as determined by the level of overdose related morbidity and mortality.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup> Within weeks, approximately 20 overdose prevention sites opened across the province, with many more operational within a year.7<\/a><\/sup> 8<\/a><\/sup> The speed of this response demonstrates what is possible when there is political will and decision makers act with real urgency. Despite this initial service expansion, the order was never enforced and largely depended on individual health authorities\u2019 willingness to act proactively, leaving communities across the province without access to life-saving services.9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the specific authority it conferred, B.C.\u2019s emergency declaration held symbolic weight.<\/strong> For many people, it was a meaningful recognition of their lived reality. It offered a sign that perhaps the province would act with the seriousness and urgency required in an emergency. In the ensuing months and years, the province increased investments into some frontline services, oversaw the rapid opening of overdose prevention sites, created the Overdose Emergency Response Centre, and initially moved to expand access to safer supply. Ten years on, the urgency of the declaration seems to have ebbed away, alongside the government\u2019s willingness to put the authority it confers to use.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charting the past ten years, it feels impossible to separate the personal from the political, the specific grief of individual losses from the collective, cumulative exhaustion of so much loss. This is compounded by witnessing the ongoing crush of a system that actively harms people, and the ways decisionmakers continue to prop it up. It is deeply wrong to have to argue that the people we love should be able to live, receive care and support, and have the things they need to be well.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, we have witnessed a regression: some opportunistic public figures have peddled mis- and disinformation, driving the rollback of evidence-based harm-reduction measures that save lives, prevent unnecessary harms, and support safer, healthier communities.<\/strong> Governments and policymakers have caved to stigma, othering people who use drugs and veering away from evidence-based approaches and life-saving interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside the pain, this past decade has also seen deep care and compassion, mutual support and reciprocity within communities, solidarity from unlikely corners and intertwined movements, and persistence in the face of immense hardship\u2014and we must recognize and uplift those bright spots. We believe in a future where all people, no matter their relationship to substance use, can access safety, well-being, autonomy and community. It does not have to be like this. People create law and policy. People can change it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand how this reality came to be, we must look at the systems and structures that create and uphold it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n