Ontario Liberals, NDP promise help on opioid crisis as election looms

Two parties pledged to help address Ontario's opioid crisis on the campaign trail Thursday.

If elected in June, the New Democrats would expand access to safe injection and consumption sites, increase detox beds and call on the federal government to decriminalize illicit drugs, leader Andrea Horwath said.

"People are in a desperate space and folks who are experiencing addictions need to have some support to try to help them find a way out of that space," Horwath said at a cafe in Paris, Ont., where she promoted overhauling the mental health system and making it part of the provincial public health care plan.

"We are not going to do it by taking away services or by capping services. We're going to do it by making sure the services are there for people when they need them."

Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca, meanwhile, said his party would restart the opioid task force, pour several hundred million dollars to expand access naloxonethe opioid overdose reversal medication and build out more housing with mental health supports.

"It is deeply disturbing to see what's happening," he said of the opioid crisis.

"We've heard from mayors, for example, right across this province about how challenging it is in each of their communities because they don't have the funding in place."

The Progressive Conservatives said in the unpassed budget that's serving as their election platform that they would provide naloxone kits and training in high-risk workplaces to help reduce opioid overdoses.

Opioiddeaths surged during pandemic

Opioid deaths and hospitalizations surged significantly across the province after the pandemic hit in early 2020.

Studies have shown the opioid crisis has hit the homeless population and those who were unemployed particularly hard during that time.

The latest yearly data available show 2,423 people died of opioids in 2020, a 58 per cent increase from the previous year.

Hospitalizations due to opioids also spiked in 2020, up nearly 20 per cent from the year before, with 12,527 visits.

Advocates say focus should be safe supply

Expanding access to naloxone is great, said Lorraine Lam, an outreach worker with Sanctuary Ministries in Toronto, but the focus should be on providing a safer supply of drugs.

"We are seeing overdoses go up all the time. We haven't really hit any sort of plateau," she said.

"We're also seeing the reality that it's not just downers that are tainted now, it's everything out there. It's a bad supply."