Quebec addiction services get $87M from Ottawa

L'Anonyme's new vehicle, in which its psycho-social workers travel, offers a supervised injection room, an inhalation room and even has equipment to analyze substances. (Pierre Saint-Arnaud / The Canadian Press)

The federal government is helping community organizations and Quebec’s health-care network with a $87 million injection for addiction and substance abuse programs.

The explosion in overdoses and addictions is now considered one of the country's most serious public health crises, and while Quebec was relatively unscathed just a few years ago, that's no longer the case.

“When we started our supervised consumption services in 2017, we were managing two, three, four overdoses a year in our vehicle; it wasn't the same issue as today because today, it's over 100 overdoses a year that our team manages inside our mobiles,” said Julien Montreuil, general manager of L'Anonyme, at a news conference on Friday in Montreal.

On-call assistance

L'Anonyme is one of the organizations benefiting from the funding provided by Ottawa's Substance Use and Dependence Program (SUDP). The community sector is, in Montreuil’s words, “hyper-underfunded.”

Montreuil was proud to present the organization’s new bus — the vehicle, with which its psycho-social workers travel, offers a supervised injection room, an inhalation room and even has equipment to analyze substances.

This vehicle and others from the organization travel on call because “we still don't talk about it enough, but most people who die of overdoses die at home,” according to the Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant.

“The drugs circulating on the street are increasingly toxic, increasingly chemical and increasingly unpredictable,” Carmant stressed. “What I say to everyone is: to try new substances is to put your life in danger.”

The services offered by the L’Anonyme bus, from substance analysis to supervised consumption, are crucial to prevent deadly overdoses. The organization, along with its other smaller vehicles, remains on call, providing service 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

'Don't look away'

The federal minister of mental health and addictions, Ya'ra Saks, was keen to salute the community representatives who were on hand. “Your job is not to look away,” she said.

She couldn't resist denouncing the conservative leader in passing, criticizing his efforts to stigmatize drug addicts.

“It's absolutely shameful that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre continues to use the most vulnerable people in our community as movie props in videos, in polarizing statements,” said Saks.

The SUDP program has been in place for some time, but Quebec managed to stretch its funding over four years. Until now, the grants were spread over two years, limiting their use to research “because investing over such short periods limited the ability to add human resources in the field,” argued Carmant.

Extending the program over four years, he explained, makes it possible to integrate clinical projects such as L'Anonyme, as well as others originating directly from the health network, such as an “addiction emergency room” in the Outaouais region, or a “dependency team” with front-line street doctors in the Montérégie region.

Only 25 per cent of the money will go to research this time, with the lion's share of 75 per cent going to clinical projects.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 25, 2024.