Should BC follow Alberta’s drug policy victory lap?

Good morning!

One of our agenda items today is about the BC government mandating flush toilets on all construction sites starting on Oct. 1, and because it’s an agenda item based on only one source, I thought I’d use the intro here to share some fun context from reporting by a friend of mine in the spring edition of BC Building Trades magazine Tradetalk. (Disclosure: I also write for Tradetalk.)

The province already mandated flush toilets, except where providing them was impractical, which acted as a loophole for many worksites to get out of that expense. And the notion that providing flush toilets for workers is impractical is pooh-poohed (ahem) pretty quickly when you learn that many construction sites already have flush toilets — they’re just locked when managers aren’t using them. They’re not for workers. Seems like a crappy (cough) situation.

In today’s newsletter, we’re looking at the recent overdose death data out of Alberta — and while that’s not, on the surface, a Vancouver story, it’s a point that people are already holding up as evidence BC should abandon harm reduction in favour of recovery. And that is a claim you can expect to see in the next month-and-a-half as we enter election season.

—Dustin Godfrey, freelancer 

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DRUGS

Should BC follow Alberta’s drug policy victory lap?

At Recovery Day, in New Westminster Saturday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a surprise appearance onstage, where he touted Alberta’s model for policy on substance use — one that prioritizes treatment and largely sidelines harm reduction.

• Alberta notes it has seen a significant drop in its overdose deaths, with May this year marking a 55% decline compared to the same month in 2023, according to provincial data. For the first five months of the year, the figure has dropped to 431 opioid-related overdose deaths from 788 deaths the year prior.

The debate: At Recovery Day, Poilievre claimed that 55% decline was the result of a shift towards a recovery model for substance use in a province that has scaled back its supervised consumption sites while ramping up its recovery facilities. Proponents of Alberta’s model have often pitted the province against BC, claiming BC is all-in on safe supply, with little in the way of recovery.

• BC United Leader Kevin Falcon, for one, was quoted in the Vancouver Sun in March last year as saying the province needs to move away from a “complete focus” on safe supply.

And with BC’s upcoming election including a major focus on drug policy, you can expect to see more of that kind of rhetoric in the coming month-and-a-half, as the BC Conservative Party is likely to (as it has in the past) point to Alberta as the North Star for our own drug policy moving forward.

Declaring victory: Poilievre wasn’t the only one to declare victory following those numbers’ release. Conservative news outlets like the National Post and Northern Beat similarly claimed the trend, as the former put it, “proves recovery model naysayers wrong.” That was a headline touted closer to home, by BC Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko, who has led the charge against harm reduction in legislature.

• Others, however, were more tempered in their remarks, with Alberta’s mental health and addictions minister saying the province is “cautiously optimistic about this trend,” according to CBC.

And while some have been quick to credit Alberta’s recovery model with the decline, addiction physician Monty Gosh told CBC there were a number of reasons for the decline, including a reduction in overdose deaths related to carfentanil, which had contributed to 23% of deaths in 2023.

Familiar talking points: This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Poilievre tout a decline in overdose deaths by half in Alberta. In his “Everything Feels Broken” video in November 2022, he cited a decline by “nearly half” — a claim that was true if you compared August 2022 with December 2021. In Aaron Gunn’s “Canada is Dying” YouTube video, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s chief of staff, Marshall Smith, said it was a 50% decrease. 

• One trouble with those claims is that a monthly total doesn’t paint much of a picture, especially when you compare separate months — December in Alberta is usually one of the deadliest months of the year for overdoses. The other trouble with those claims is that 2023 went on to be the deadliest year in Alberta’s history with overdoses.

Another trouble: The initial report is typically an undercount both in BC and in Alberta. In maintaining an ongoing graph comparing overdose death rates in Ontario, BC and Alberta (which hasn’t been updated recently), I often have to adjust monthly death rates going back at least a year with each update — almost always an upward adjustment.

• That “nearly half” decline between December 2021 and August 2022 has since dropped to a 34% decline, based on Alberta’s most recent data — still substantial, but not exactly half. Euan Thomson, the Alberta-based writer and analyst on drug policy behind Drug Data Decoded, noted in a Twitter thread that monthly increases often increase by 10 to 15% with subsequent data releases in Alberta.

“Still critical to report that deaths are primarily a function of drug supply toxicity,” Thomson wrote. “There is no evidence to suggest bed-based treatment – the AB model in a nutshell – reduces death.”

My take: Given the victory lap proponents did with Alberta’s model in 2022, and what followed, it’s too early to take much from the decline in overdose deaths in Alberta this year. But as of the most recent update to my graph, BC has also seen a decline in overdose deaths in 2024 — April this year was 26% below the per-capita rate in April 2023 — and the two parties often follow similar ups and downs in their monthly overdose death rates.

• This is consistent with the toxic supply theory of overdose deaths, as drug distribution networks span BC and Alberta. Both are positive trends, but given the drug supply’s volatility, I have a hard time believing this will last in either province.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the claim BC is hyper-fixated on safe supply and harm reduction doesn’t have much backing it up. Safe supply prescriptions have been steadily declining since spring 2023, according to the BC CDC dashboard, and funding for recovery has always towered over funding for harm reduction.

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VANCOUVER NUMBERS

📈 6.6%: Canada’s unemployment rate in August, with layoffs on the rise, according to an RBC economist. That’s a 0.2 percentage point rise over July, according to Statistics Canada. [CBC]

🧑‍🎓 45%: The decline in international student enrolment estimated by Universities Canada following the federal government’s cap on international students, well above the 35% estimated by the government. It’s not clear how this is playing out here in BC, where the province has put in its own rules limiting international students. [Global]

⛴️ 6: The Queen of New Westminster ferry, which runs from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, will be out of operation for this many months after its propeller was sheared off. BC Ferries says the damage may be due to “structural fatigue,” with repairs “anticipated to be significant.” [CTV]

NEW JOBS

Find your dream job in Vancouver:

1. Marketing director at BLO Marketing

2. Email marketing specialist at Raffle Nexus Canada

3. Program administrator at SFU

4. Coordinator at Alliance of BC Modern Treaty Nations

5. Communications and marketing officer at SFU

6. Data coordinator at SFU

7. Senior manager of people and culture at Connective Support Society

Local jobs are selected by the Lookout team and are not paid ads, unless specifically noted.

THE AGENDA

🚌 The union representing HandyDART drivers and Transdev, the operator of the service, entered mediation yesterday, with the union saying it is cautiously optimistic but prepared to hold the strike “as long as it takes.” [CTV]

💊 Experts say they’re not surprised to find that Metro Vancouver leads a cohort of seven cities in detecting a fentanyl byproduct in wastewater — but the founder of one drug testing organization notes that this analysis leaves out the contamination of benzodiazepines and tranquilizers in the drug supply. [CBC]

🚨 The man killed in one of two stranger attacks last week was identified by police as Francis David Laporte, an unhoused person who had lived in the city for years. [Global]

🏥 Premier David Eby is once again opening the door to involuntary care for mental health, but said it would need to be “dignified and humane,” following vocal pushback by, among others, BC’s representative for children and youth and public health experts. [Global]

🗳️ BC United will be running candidates in the election after all. The party explained to members in a letter that it is doing so to retain its registration with Elections BC. But one BC United MLA points to a very different reason — trying to get the $1.84-per-vote subsidy to pay down some of its financial commitments. [CityNews]

👏 Three strangers were able to chase off an attacker who had held a 23-year-old woman at knifepoint in an alleyway in Mount Pleasant Saturday night. One man heard the woman’s plea for help, and he flagged down a passing vehicle and confronted the man with the knife alongside the two occupants of the car. [CTV]

💨 That haze you may have seen in Vancouver yesterday was smoke coming from wildfires in Washington and Oregon, with the air advisory listed as a medium risk Sunday. It was forecasted to be a low risk today, with cloudy and cooler weather incoming. [CityNews]

🚽 What’s that sound, you ask? That’s the sound of toilets flushing in every construction site. In the future. Specifically, after Oct. 1, when new provincial rules are set to take effect mandating construction sites with 25 or more workers to include flush toilets and hand-washing facilities. It’s time-travelling toilet sounds. Don’t think too much about it. [CTV]

GOOD NEWS

Start your day off with some good news:

Sonar produced by a deep sea research facility off the coast of BC played the role of “dinner bell” for northern elephant seals, who learned to associate sonar noise with the presence of food. At least eight elephant seals were repeatedly visiting the site to hunt, according to researchers, whose video from the seabed (645m deep) also showed the creatures “power napping,” which also had never been seen before. [The Canadian Press]

EVENTS

Come From Away | Queen Elizabeth Theatre | Tomorrow to Sunday | Part of a national tour by Broadway Across Canada, bringing a musical about the small town that welcomed the world | Tickets $77

Bent Knee | Biltmore Cabaret | Tomorrow, 6:30 pm | A “fiercely innovative group,” with openers Megafauna and Jenny Haniver | Tickets $25

Vancouver Queer Film Festival | Various venues | Sep. 11-22 | A selection of 97 projects from 27 countries, with 28 features, five series debuts and 64 shot films — not to mention the five parties | Tickets $17

Bike the Night | David Lam Park | Saturday, 5 pm | Light up the seawall with hundreds of cyclists for this 10km route, with music, food trucks, games and more | Tickets $22

Car Free Day | Main Street | Sunday | If you missed yesterday’s Car Free Day on the Drive, no worries! Main Street has you covered | Free admission

Formline Calligraphy | Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art | Sep. 18 to Jan. 26 | Exhibition explores the creative relationship between Haida artist Bill Reid and famed printmaker, calligrapher, and close friend Robert Reid | Tickets $13 

Chantal Kreviazuk | Vancouver Playhouse | Sep. 20 | The three-time Juno and Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter comes to Vancouver | Tickets $50

Childish Gambino | Rogers Arena | Sep. 23 | Donald Glover’s musical act comes to Vancouver as part of his world tour following the release of Atavista | Tickets $117

PHOTO OF THE DAY

The sun was looking pretty red at Kits Beach on Saturday, as wildfire smoke from south of the border blanketed Vancouver.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• Some century-old footage of English Bay is getting a new look. [Vancouver is Awesome]

• Should BC legalize rolling stops for cyclists at stop signs? Some research weighs in. [CBC]

• Some students are getting seniors hooked on Lego. [Vancouver is Awesome]

• They’ll call anything “luxury” in this housing market. [Daily Hive]

• Vancouver Canucks winger Conor Garland really loves sharks. [Vancouver is Awesome]

QUIZ

Today’s quiz question that you can find in the newsletter — how many workers need to be on a construction site to trigger the new provincial requirement for flushing toilets? Reply with the correct answer and your name to be featured in the newsletter.