A group of Vancouver Island addiction medicine physicians set up an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in front of the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, B.C. in November 2024.Chad Hipolito/The Globe and Mail
The Vancouver Island municipality of Nanaimo wants the local health authority to justify the continued existence of the community’s legal overdose prevention site as opposition mounts to the facility around the corner from its City Hall.
Nanaimo City Council deferred voting Monday evening on a motion asking the Vancouver Island Health Authority, or VIHA, to shut down the site in favour of meeting with the agency in coming weeks. The site has been operating since 2022.
Earlier this month, Victoria City Council deferred a similar vote that would have asked VIHA to shut down that city’s two overdose prevention sites, so that the municipal government could gather evidence and debate the merits of the facilities.
Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog said municipal politicians are merely responding to growing skepticism over harm reduction projects, from people who are angry that these sites lead to more open drug use in the surrounding area.
“Can you name a part of the province where this isn’t an issue?” said Mr. Krog, who was a long-time provincial NDP MLA before becoming mayor.
Mr. Krog said Nanaimo councillors will be requesting data from VIHA, such as referrals to treatment centres and supportive housing placements, that prove this public investment is saving lives and is “returning value to the community.”
“We want more from this [site] because a lack of fatal overdoses doesn’t make their life better, it doesn’t reduce the number of people who are addicted, it doesn’t reduce the crime associated with drug use or consumption,” he said. “It keeps them alive in a life of complete and utter misery – you can’t tell me they’re happy.”
The mayor has long called for more money to be invested in the forced detention of those with complex mental health issues and addictions, many of whom have acquired brain injuries from a lack of oxygen during an overdose. He also questioned what VIHA is doing to get more users to consume their drugs under supervision, noting that a significant number of fatal overdoses occur at home.
More than 16,000 people in B.C. have died from using illicit drugs since 2016, the year the province declared a public health emergency.
The Nanaimo site has generated enough concerns about disorder and violence that municipal staff previously proposed building a 1.8-metre-high fence intended to protect those working at City Hall.
Nanaimo council voted against the $400,000 fence at a committee meeting earlier this month, with Mr. Krog saying he was unsure about its effectiveness as well as the “really problematic message” it would send.
At Monday’s meeting, several councillors spoke in support of the overdose prevention site, noting that it saves people who don’t have access to safe supply of substances nor timely mental health and addiction treatments.
Réka Gustafson, chief medical health officer for VIHA, said in an interview she appreciated the tenor of Monday’s council meeting, which “challenged the false narrative that overdose prevention sites either enable drug use or cause street disorder, neither of which are true.”
She added that recent data from the BC Centre for Disease Control estimated that between January, 2019, and October, 2024, Island Health’s overdose prevention work helped avert 2,140 deaths. But she said data was not readily available Tuesday on how many people had visited the Nanaimo overdose prevention site and had been referred to addiction treatment programs or put into supportive housing.
Dr. Gustafson said the authority regularly meets with Victoria and Nanaimo staff, but acknowledged that more discussion on these overdose prevention sites is obviously needed, and welcomed the opportunity to defend the sites.
“Some of these motions that are coming forward are reflecting the depth of frustration with a complex problem that is really, really hard to address,” said Dr. Gustafson.
Ann Livingston, a volunteer with the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users, said her group of 400 or so members is trying to fill the gap in services left when the city’s lone overdose prevention site closes at 9 p.m., by offering overnight help three blocks from the facility. The group typically sets up a tent every Friday and Saturday night, as well as the entire week that welfare cheques are released each month. This allows for peers trained to use naloxone to supervise substance users and provide clean supplies, such as syringes and pipes.
Her group’s president was arrested last December in a parking lot beside City Hall and charged with mischief for doing this work, but had the charges stayed in March, she said.
“Our efforts writing letters wasn’t going anywhere so we thought: ‘We’ll just set up right outside so that when they finish there and continue to use drugs, they can be safe in our tent,’” said Ms. Livingston, who has helped create a dozen grassroots overdose prevention sites around B.C.
With a report from The Canadian Press