Flow of fentanyl from China targeted
International co-operation needed, Goodale says, as B.C. delegation presses for action from feds
OTTAWA — Canada needs international help in stanching the flow of deadly fentanyl from China, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Thursday after meeting with B.C. Premier Christy Clark about the country’s escalating opioid epidemic.
Goodale, Health Minister Jane Philpott and Clark’s B.C. delegation met in Ottawa ahead of a two-day summit that will bring together medical professionals and experts from across the country.
“The world has to take this seriously, just as we are taking it seriously,” Goodale said outside the Commons.
Last spring, B.C. became the first province in Canada to declare a public health emergency following a dramatic spike in overdose deaths related to the use of drugs such as fentanyl.
It’s vital that federal government takes additional action to crack down on the import of fentanyl from China, Clark said.
“British Columbia has been the front line of it,” she said. “We are the closest to China so we have really been dealing with it unfolding locally. But … as it moves across the country, we can’t deal with it on a province-to-province basis. It has to be a national strategy.”
Addressing the stream of fentanyl will require personnel and appropriate technology at the border, Goodale said, adding it will also involve global partnership.
“This not a Canada-only issue,” he said. “This is one that could have dire consequences in many parts of the world. … So it takes an international effort as well as a domestic one.”
Clark was joined Thursday by advocates including Leslie McBain, a Pender Island mother who lost her 25-yearold son, Jordan, to opioid abuse.
Every level of government would have responded faster to any other toxic substance coming in from a foreign country, Clark added, conceding that the fact fentanyl is a legal drug is a big part of the problem.
“We have been too slow,” she said. “We’ve put a lot of effort in and we are catching up, in B.C., but we don’t want … other mothers and sisters and aunts to find themselves in the same situation.”
Today’s summit is being co-hosted by Philpott and Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins — both doctors themselves.
Hoskins said much of the summit will explore ways to help people who are already suffering from addiction, while examining ways to prevent overdoses.
There is also the thorny issue of examining the ways doctors prescribe powerful painkillers.