The report comes amid police warnings of organized crime diverting 'safer supply' opioids to the black market
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As B.C. approaches the third year of “safer supply,” a report by the province’s Auditor General has accused health authorities of a disorganized and somewhat secretive approach to its experiment of providing recreational opioids to drug addicts.
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B.C. “did not effectively report publicly on the performance of prescribed safer supply” and “did not effectively monitor the initial provincewide implementation of prescribed safer supply,” wrote Auditor General Michael Pickup in a report published this week.
The report is in no way a criticism of the underlying philosophy of “safer supply.” In fact, the Auditor General mostly accused the government of not doing enough to distribute more recreational opioids to more people.
“As the drug supply has become more toxic, the need for low-barrier access to prescribed safer supply has become more pressing,” wrote the report, which also urged the province to overcome “barriers” to the program’s implementation such as “municipal resistance.”
But the Auditor General also said the province had failed to maintain basic standards on how the program should be administered – or publish data on how it was working.
“The ministries’ current level of public reporting is insufficient for health system partners and the public to be informed about whether prescribed safer supply is meeting its intended outcomes effectively and efficiently,” wrote Pickup.
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Safer supply is being run as a trial program, and as such providers are required to keep detailed statistics on “clients” accessing the program, how often they’re using it and what drugs they’re being prescribed.
While this information apparently exists internally, Pickup found that the government had quietly disregarded a pledge to make the data public.
British Columbians were supposed to be given access to an online dashboard of safer supply information by September 2022, “but this hadn’t occurred during the audit period,” wrote Pickup.
And even if it does happen, Pickup wrote that the data lacks any “geographic reporting,” so it won’t be possible to identify where safer supply is being accessed.
B.C. is one of the world’s first jurisdictions to officially pursue the doctrine of “safer supply” in a bid to steer addicts away from tainted drugs in the black market.
Despite B.C.’s acknowledgement that there is not yet any firm evidence that the program is working as intended, a February report by Provincial Officer of Health Bonnie Henry recommended a dramatic expansion of the program.
Henry advised the government to distribute more opioids into more places – with special emphasis on getting “safer supply” into remote Indigenous communities. “The Province should work with manufacturers and distributors to expand opioid medication options available to people at risk of opioid overdose, with prioritization of DAM (heroin) and fentanyl in a variety of formulations, including smokeable formulations,” she wrote.
Poor record-keeping regarding safer supply appears to have obtained new relevance given recent reports by the RCMP that organized crime groups are obtaining hydromorphone pills distributed via safer supply and then selling them on the black market.
“What we have seen in Prince George is people taking prescribed medication, some of which is dedicated as safe supply prescription drugs, and selling them to organized crime groups in exchange for more potent illicit drugs,” Cpl. Jennifer Cooper of the RCMP’s Prince George detachment told the National Post earlier this month.
“The organized crime groups are then taking the prescription drugs and selling them inter-provincially across Canada.”
A secret RCMP report has warned that Canada may descend into civil unrest once the populace fully takes stock of how broke they are. “The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the report, adding “for example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live.” The report was marked “secret” and was only intended to be circulated among the RCMP and “decision-makers” in the federal government, but a heavily redacted version became public thanks to an access to information request by Thompson Rivers University researcher Matt Malone.
It’s not typical that federal politicians will berate provincial politicians over a preferred policy point, but last week Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre sent an unsolicited letter to B.C. Premier David Eby demanding that B.C. join with the Conservatives in demanding an end to the planned federal carbon tax increase on April 1. To this, Eby told B.C. media “I don’t live in the Pierre Poilievre campaign office and baloney factory,” prompting Poilievre to reply that “British Columbians are forced to eat baloney because they can’t afford anything else.”
And Michael Ignatieff appears to have landed on his feet. After leading the Liberal Party into one of their worst-ever electoral defeats in 2011, Ignatieff went right back to his pre-politics life of being a foreign academic, most notably a five year period when he was president of Central European University. And it’s just been announced that he’s set to receive an honorary Doctor of Letters from Cambridge University. A brief bio published by Cambridge cites Ignatieff as a professor, Fellow of King’s College, writer and historian … before slotting the word “politician” right at the end.
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