B.C. Conservatives vow to shut down safe-consumption sites

The B.C. Conservatives have promised to shut down all drug consumption sites and replace them with mental health and addictions treatment centres if they win the upcoming provincial election.

But critics say the plan flies in the face of evidence-based research that shows such sites save people from potentially fatal overdoses.

B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad made the vow at a rally in Surrey, B.C., on Sunday night, saying he would stop the B.C. NDP's program to hand out free, regulated opioids to drug users.

"We've had enough of David Eby and these drugs and handing out free crack pipes, having these drug dens in our community," Rustad said.

"We've had enough of this nonsense. We're going to end decriminalization, we're going to end safe supply. We're going to make sure we put in a regimen of treatment and recovery."

Rustad says safe-consumption sites would be transformed into treatment intake centres, which would connect people with addictions to mental health and addiction-recovery services. He says this would get people out of the cycle of addiction.

As the toxic drug crisis continues to kill an average of around six people a day, the three major parties contesting the election in B.C. are deeply divided on the best solution. 

Eby says Rustad's plan would just make the crisis worse. 

"When you close these sites, people don't stop using drugs. In fact, they have less contact with the people who can help them get into recovery and rebuild their lives," Eby said during a campaign stop in Langley on Sunday. 

"All of a sudden they're using drugs in communities, in parks, in the doorways of businesses."

Eby says Rustad's position is a reversal from the one he held during a town hall in Richmond on Sept. 15.

The party released audio of Rustad saying: "I was talking with one individual who said he OD'd in a safe injection site six times before he finally got into treatment. Now, thank God, he was able, when he OD'd, he was in a place where they could provide the support for him. If he wasn't there, you know, he wouldn't be alive today."

Vancouver harm reduction advocate Guy Felicella said he's the "individual" Rustad was talking about. 

Felicella recalled talking to Rustad on a Vancouver street corner about his 10 years of heroin addiction which, after six near fatal overdoses, finally led to treatment. 

"We had an in-depth conversation of my life journey of harm reduction keeping me alive long enough until I was able to find recovery," Felicella said.

"Without that harm reduction safety net, sadly, we are going to cause a lot more deaths in society."

Felicella says it's a false narrative that safe-consumption sites can't exist alongside treatment and recovery.

"We have a poisoned drug supply that kills six people every day. Tell me where it makes sense not to have both services scaled up right across the country," he said.

Rustad acknowledged he talked to Felicella, but says the system failed him by letting him overdose six times.

"After the first time, government should have actually stepped in and put him into mandatory treatment and recovery so he didn't overdose five more times," Rustad told CBC News on Sunday night.

Asked whether he thinks safe-consumption sites save lives, Rustad did not answer directly.

"I look at it from the perspective of what the overall results are and people dying in British Columbia," he said. 

"We need to change it. Consumption sites need to be linking people to recovery. We need to be building out recovery and this government has failed to do that."

Eby says Rustad is "playing politics" with people's lives.

"He wants to close that site that saved that man's life, that gave him the chance to get into recovery," Eby said.

In 2003, Vancouver became the first city in North America to allow a supervised injection site. Insite had the backing of the former B.C. Liberal government under Gordon Campbell and survived a legal challenge by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Ottawa's attempt to close Insite threatened to undermine the health, safety and rights of drug users.

B.C. now has 50 overdose prevention sites and the province has looked at expanding them to allow inhalation, the preferred method of consumption.

B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau said Rustad should be "ashamed" for a plan that will further endanger the most marginalized British Columbians.

She said as well as recently supporting safe-consumption sites, Rustad was also a minister in the B.C. Liberal government that funded them.

"In fact, he was sitting in the government caucus when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Insite 'saved lives and improved health without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area,'" Furstenau said. 

According to the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, 3,945 fatal overdoses were prevented at safe-consumption sites across the province in 2023.

Rustad has also pledged to end the government's program to supply free prescription opioids, such as hydromorphone, to drug users.

The intent of the program, which has the backing of Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, is to separate people from the toxic drug supply.

However, the program has come under fire after several police departments found evidence that safe supply drugs were being diverted into the hands of organized criminals and used as a separate form of currency in the illegal drug market.

The B.C. government is currently being sued by two families who claim their teens took diverted safe supply drugs like hydromorphone, which led to an addiction to harder drugs.

Eby has tapped Dr. Penny Ballam, board chair for Vancouver Coastal Health, to look into adding a chemical tracker to hydromorphone pills to prevent diversion.