The federal government is helping community organizations and Quebec’s health care network with an injection of $87 million for substance abuse and addiction programs.

The explosion of overdoses and abuse is now considered one of the country’s most serious public health crises, and while Quebec was relatively unscathed just a few years ago, that is no longer the case.

“When we started our supervised consumption services in 2017, we were handling two, three, four overdoses a year in our vehicle; it was not the same problem as today because today there are over a hundred overdoses per year that our team handles in our mobiles,” said Julien Montreuil, general manager of L’Anonyme, at a press conference on Friday in Montreal.

On-call assistance

L’Anonyme is one of the organizations benefiting from funding from Ottawa’s Substance Use and Dependence Program (SUDP). The social sector is, in Montreuil’s words, “hyper-underfunded.”

Montreuil was proud to present the organization’s new bus — The vehicle, which its psychosocial workers travel with, offers a supervised injection room, an inhalation room and even has equipment to analyze substances.

This vehicle and others from the organization are on call because “we still don’t talk about it enough, but most people who die of overdoses die at home,” according to Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant.

“The drugs circulating on the street are increasingly toxic, increasingly chemical and increasingly unpredictable,” Carmant stressed. “What I tell everyone is: trying new subjects is putting your life in danger.”

The services offered by the L’Anonyme bus, from substance analysis to supervised consumption, are critical to preventing fatal overdoses. The organization, along with its other smaller vehicles, is on call and provides service 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“Don’t Look Away”

Federal Minister for Mental Health and Addictions, Ya’ra Saks, was keen to greet the community representatives in attendance. “Your job is not to look away,” she said.

She could not resist in passing condemning the Conservative leader and criticizing his attempts to stigmatize drug addicts.

“It is absolutely shameful that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre continues to use the most vulnerable people in our society as props in videos, in polarizing statements,” Saks said.

The SUDP program has been in place for some time, but Quebec managed to stretch its funding over four years. Until now, the grants were spread over two years, limiting their use for research “because investments in such short periods limited the ability to add human resources to the field,” Carmant argued.

Extending the program over four years, he explained, makes it possible to integrate clinical projects like L’Anonyme, as well as others that come directly from the health network, such as an “addiction emergency” in the Outaouais region, or an “addiction team” with street doctors in the front line in the Montérégie region.

Only 25 percent of the money will go to research this time, with the lion’s share of 75 percent going to clinical projects.

This report was first published in French by The Canadian Press on October 25, 2024