Mayors link drug crisis, housing need
Providing affordable shelter cuts health and justice costs, they argue
Mayors of Canada’s biggest cities, pushing since last autumn to wrest $12.6 billion over the next decade from the Trudeau government for affordable housing, used the opioid crisis as an argument Friday to advance their case.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his counterparts across the country said federal housing assistance would be a useful part of a broader, multi-faceted response needed after a shocking rise in B.C. overdose deaths last month.
“This is obviously a national emergency and it needs to be treated like that,” Robertson said after he and his counterparts from across the country met privately with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“The solutions have to go toward treatment, have to go to health care and housing supports that are essential to ensure people aren’t overdosing and dying.”
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson said mayors were able at the meeting with Trudeau to “pivot” from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ long-standing push for more federal housing dollars to the dramatic rise in overdose deaths.
“Supportive housing programs are a critical part of the intervention” to keep addicts away from street-level opioids laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl, said Iveson, chairman of the FCM’s BigCity Mayors’ Caucus.
The FCM unveiled a proposed national housing strategy last September that included a request that Ottawa come up with $12.6 billion over 10 years.
But the focus was primarily on affordability for Canadians of all income levels, and there was only passing reference to the impact of poor housing on marginalized Canadians.
“We know that investing in housing reduces costs on our health care and justice systems, avoidable costs that are burdensome for our provincial partners,” Iveson and Toronto Mayor John Tory stated in a published statement on Canada’s “housing crisis.”
However, a subsequent submission to the federal government did refer to the role of social housing in dealing with addiction issues.
Mayors were clearly gripped Friday by the fact that B.C.’s opioid nightmare has evolved into what Ottawa has acknowledged is a national health care crisis.
The B.C. Coroners Service reported this week that there were 142 overdose deaths in December.
That was the highest monthly total ever recorded, and brought the annual toll to 914 — an increase of almost 80 per cent over the previous year.
“We’re not clearly at the stage as some cities are, such as Vancouver,” said Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, whose city has experienced a jump in overdose deaths but not nearly of the scale that has struck the West Coast.
“But obviously we want to learn from what is going on in Vancouver.”
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi told reporters that federal, provincial and municipal leaders have to respond to the “incredible” lack of mental health and addiction treatment services in cities and towns across the country.
“If we’re seeing (the services deficiency) in downtowns in big cities I shudder to think of what is happening in smaller centres in rural areas where those services are even less available,” said Nenshi.
The mayors, who met Friday to discuss their wish list in advance of the upcoming 2017 federal budget, focused their discussion primarily on hopes for a continued flow of billions of dollars in city infrastructure spending.
But the portion of the meeting devoted to the overdose crisis did determine that the mayors would not be calling on Ottawa to invoke the Emergencies Act, a never-used piece of legislation that was passed in the 1980s.
The law was brought in to replace the War Measures Act, which was last used to suspend civil liberties during Quebec’s October Crisis of 1970.
B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake has called on the federal government to declare a national emergency, but Health Minister Jane Philpott has questioned whether it would be appropriate to invoke that legislation.
The Emergencies Act would allow the federal government to essentially take over responsibility for delivery of health care, for instance, in a province deemed incapable of dealing with a major issue.
It would also allow cabinet to remove people from particular areas and build temporary hospitals.