Statement from Sarah Plank, Director of Strategic Communications, Ministry of Health

The overdose crisis is a very complex issue involving many social factors, including housing, public
safety, policing, border control, public health, harm reduction, and addiction and recovery treatment, as
well as legislation that crosses many jurisdictional boundaries. There is no quick and easy solution to the
overdose crisis, but we are mobilizing across all sectors to do all we can to respond and save lives. This
includes significant expenditures, totalling more than $43 million that has been committed so far to
support this work, for:

o​ ​a significant expansion of naloxone;
o​ ​funding for start-up costs of supervised consumption services;
o​ ​expanded access to the opioid substitution treatment suboxone;
o​ ​activities being undertaken by health authorities, the BC Coroner’s Service and BC
Emergency Health Services;
o​ ​additional addictions treatment beds;
o​ ​activities under the provinces’ Guns and Gangs strategies;
o​ ​the establishment of the BC Centre on Substance Use; and
o​ ​a province-wide public awareness campaign.
This doesn’t include the countless hours that many, many staff in the ministries of health and public
safety, health authorities, first responders including paramedics, firefighters, and police, community
workers, non-profit organizations and other involved agencies are dedicating to mobilizing the province’s
response. Nor does it include the time we are spending making policy changes to help our response and
lobbying the federal government to make changes to regulations under their responsibility.
Government is continuing to take advice and direction from the Joint Task Force, and will take further
action as required based on that.
A breakdown of expenditures planned and approved to date for work underway follows.
Estimates of expenditures planned and approved to date related to overdose crisis response
Description

Estimated
expenditur
e (millions)

Notes

Overdose task force funding
(​incl. intranasal naloxone for
police officers, special
investigation unit by coroner’s
service, drug testing
equipment for BCCDC, JIBC
first responder website,
start-up costs for new
supervised consumption
services, enhanced
surveillance by health
authorities and evaluation of
drug checking approaches)

$ 5.00

Announced Sept. 28, 2016. Health
authority and Coroner’s Service funding
amounts listed below are in addition to this
$5 million.

 Ministry of Public Safety and
Solicitor General – Guns and
Gangs strategy

$ 5.5

$3.5M for 2 new CFSEU teams for
investigations related to guns, gangs &
trafficking / $2M for advanced investigative
techniques through Provincial Tactical
Enforcement Priority. As a result of
overdose crisis, police have prioritized
investigative resources to target traffickers
of these deadly illicit drugs.

BC Coroner’s Service
(coroner’s fees, body
conveyance, morgue
storage, toxicology testing,
autopsies)

$ 1.10

These expenses are in addition to the
allocation under the $5M for task force

Establishment of BC Centre
on Substance Use

$ 5.00

Announced Sept. 28, 2016

BC Emergency Health
Services

$ 5.00

New additional funding targeted for
overdose response – announced Nov. 25,
2016

Health authority spending

$ 4.42

These expenses are in addition to
allocations under $5M for task force

Additional naloxone kits

$ 0.32

Expanded access to
suboxone
​

$ 1.01

Pharmacare spent $4M on suboxone from
Oct. 2015-Sept. 2016 – an increase of just
over $1M from the previous year.

Annual operating costs of
220 additional addictions
treatment beds

$14.00

More beds to be opened this fiscal year.

Community Action Initiative
– resources for parents,
people who work with youth
and communities

$ .75

Reallocated funding from previous grant
from PHSA

Public awareness campaign

$ 1.18

Includes TV and radio PSAs, posters in
restaurants and bars, social media
campaign, collateral materials for
distribution by partner organizations and
community agencies

TOTAL

$43.28

In relation to you previous story earlier this week, comparing spending on the H1N1 pandemic, I will also
note that in 2009/10 Cabinet approved ​up to​ $80M in contingency funding to be made available for the

 H1N1 response. Actual expenditure was $40.6M. I will also note that the H1N1 pandemic and the
overdose crisis are two very different public health challenges that cannot be compared. There is a
significant difference between responding to the overdose public health emergency and responding to a
pandemic – which can be addressed through a relatively uncomplicated awareness, preparedness and
mitigation strategy of education, rapid development and deployment of a vaccine and antiviral
medications.

I apologize that this information has taken some time to gather for you. Please don’t hesitate to get in
touch if you have any questions about any of this.

Thanks,
Sarah.