Vancouver is getting a third legally sanctioned supervised injection site after the federal government announced Friday that it approved an application from Vancouver Coastal Health for a facility on Powell Street in the Downtown Eastside.
The new six-booth site will operate inside Lookout Society’s Getaway facility (formerly the Living Room) at 528 Powell St. It’s a drop-in centre for people living with mental health and drug use challenges and has offered an “overdose prevention site” for visitors since December. The government also approved two injection sites for Surrey and one mobile unit in Montreal.
“Our government remains committed to combatting the current overdose epidemic and to taking swift action that will help save the lives of Canadians,” Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott said in a news release Friday. “Responding to this crisis requires a whole-of-society approach. No single action is going to put an end to the mounting number of overdoses occurring across the country, and it is crucial that we work together and continue to explore new ways to help us reverse the course of this crisis.”
When the new injection site opens in Vancouver, it will be the third legally sanctioned site in the city. Insite on East Hastings and a smaller injection room at the Dr. Peter Centre are the two others. The legal sites are not to be confused with several “overdose prevention sites,” including the one at Lookout’s Powell Street location, which have operated in Vancouver and in other parts of the province since late last year.
The temporary sites were given the green light by the federal and provincial governments in December 2016 in response to the escalating opioid crisis. In Vancouver, the sites are located in hotels and drug users’ centres and set up in rooms with clean injection supplies. Unlike Insite and the Dr. Peter Centre, they are not staffed with full-time health care providers. They also operate without an exemption under Canada’s drug laws.
The new legal site on Powell Street will be open 12 hours a day, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and is expected to be fully operational in June, once renovations are complete. Vancouver Coastal Health is also awaiting approval for another legal site at the Heatley Integrated Health Centre at 330 Heatley St.
Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall and Dr. Patricia Daly, chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, welcomed the news of the latest approval, with Daly saying in a news release the new site “will go a long way in helping to stem the fatalities that are plaguing our city.”
In the same release, Mayor Gregor Robertson said the new site will have a significant impact for its users and prevent drug overdose deaths “by getting people indoors and connecting them to life-saving harm reduction and vital services like detox, addictions counselling and treatment.”
News of Ottawa’s move came as Robertson and the Vancouver Police Department renewed their calls this week for the provincial and federal governments to expand drug treatment options in response to the continuing overdose crisis that has claimed 158 lives in the city this year.
The combined pressure of Robertson, who is also chairperson of the Big City Mayors Caucus Task Force on the Opioid Crisis, and the police department, which released a report calling for drug users to be given clean opioids, came as the city reported this week that four people died of a suspected overdose in the week of May 15.
“Vancouver’s overdose death toll in the fentanyl crisis continues to spiral out of control,” Robertson said. “We need swift and comprehensive health care interventions to get people the treatment they need, when they need it, to reduce and ultimately eliminate deaths from drug overdoses.”
Robertson noted there is strong momentum and support from first responders, health providers and frontline workers for treatment options such as clean prescriptions drugs. The status quo, he added, is not working.
The mayor’s comments capped off a week in which the Big City Mayors Caucus Task Force on the Opioid Crisis also released a series of recommendations aimed at governments to do more to curb the crisis that killed more than 2,300 people in Canada last year.
Last week in Ottawa, Bill C-37 received Royal Assent and is designed to streamline the application process for supervised injection sites, “without compromising the health and safety of clients, staff, or the surrounding community,” Philpott said.
