BC Liberals leader pitches $1.5 billion addictions treatment strategy

BC Liberals leader Kevin Falcon pitches $1.5 billion addictions treatment strategy

Red Fish Healing Centre for Mental Health and Addiction at the former Riverview Hospital lands at 2745 Lougheed Highway, Coquitlam. (Provincial Health Services Authority)

With the possibility of a provincial election growing, BC Liberals leader Kevin Falcon has made his first major policy announcement of what his party, if it were to form government, would do differently to address the escalating opioid addictions and mental health crisis.

Falcon is promising a heightened, free and highly accessible recovery and treatment strategy for individuals enduring substance use addictions.

Over the program’s initial three years, there would be $1.5 billion in funding, including $995 million for operating the various programs and support services and $525 million for capital costs such as building new and improved facilities.

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This includes $150 million annually to specifically expand access to addiction treatment beds by eliminating user fees at non-profit facilities and contracting with licensed private treatment services to fund the cost of residential addiction treatment directly.

Currently, most addiction treatment beds in BC are privately operated facilities primarily funded by their patients. Non-profit facilities receive some government funding and charge fees based on a sliding scale of up to $45 per day or about $1,300 per month, depending on income. Licensed private treatment operators do not receive any funding from the provincial government.

The funding would also be used to triple the beds at the Red Fish Healing Centre on the former Riverview Hospital lands in Coquitlam and build additional regional treatment facilities using the complex mental health support model in other regions of the province. This would ensure specialized mental health care is accessible to patients close to their home community.

The Red Fish Healing Centre was initiated by the previous BC Liberals government, and it reached completion in 2021 for $130 million, providing 105 beds for treating mental illness and addictions simultaneously — the first of its kind in North America — and replacing existing facilities in Burnaby.

Falcon also stated that while the “Portugal model” is the gold standard for addressing opioid addictions, the strategy that has been in place in BC falls well short of following that proven strategy as it “requires way more than decriminalization and harm reduction on their own.”

This week, a three-year, provincial-wide pilot project began on decriminalizing the use of small amounts of illicit drugs. Falcon suggests this technical decriminalization will not have the intended major impact, as it has “already been in effect as the de facto law enforcement policy in BC for years.”

“It is a small fraction of what should be a comprehensive approach, including harm reduction measures and effective public education, with a relentless focus on treatment as part of a recovery-oriented system of care,” said Falcon.

“It is misplaced compassion to have society’s most vulnerable be exploited and abused by predatory drug dealers and human traffickers while we pretend to care about their welfare.”

Falcon adds that the BC Liberals will endorse a plan to address homelessness proposed by Dr. Julian Somers, a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. The plan by Somers focuses on “evidence-based services” and a “new approach to supporting people who have been persistently excluded and harmed by current practices.”

As well, Falcon promises to implement involuntary care as a tool of last resort for use on a case-to-case basis when adults and youth require intervention that forces them to receive treatment. Under existing policies, such care is voluntary, but Premier David Eby has also previously suggested involuntary care would be explored as an option.

Eby and his BC NDP party are expected to include major additional spending measures to tackle crime, homelessness, mental health, and opioid addiction issues in the 2023 budget, which will be released sometime over the coming weeks.

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