Ottawa spending $2.8M to fight overdose crisis in Atlantic Canada
The federal government is spending $2.8 million to combat the overdose crisis across Atlantic Canada.
Marjorie Michel, minister of health, announced the money will support projects in Fredericton and Miramichi in New Brunswick, Amherst in Nova Scotia and St. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The money will come from the Emergency Treatment Fund.
'This funding will deliver immediate support where it is needed most,' said Michel. 'We are using every tool available to connect people to care, address urgent local challenges, and keep our communities safe.'
The John Howard Society and the City of Fredericton will use the money to expand outreach efforts, adding overnight services for vulnerable populations. The program will deliver supplies, distribute naloxone and offer overdose support.
'By extending outreach efforts into the overnight hours, we aim to ensure that no one is left without access to essential services—regardless of the time of day,' said John Barrow, executive director of the Society. 'These new overnight outreach services will work in close coordination with existing daytime programs, creating a continuous and responsive support system that prioritizes safety, connection to services, and community care.'
More to come…
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CBC
2 hours ago
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A crisis foretold: 3 decades of warnings on N.B.'s aging population
Social Sharing The nursing home wait-list crisis hitting some of New Brunswick's biggest hospitals this summer may be setting new records, but it should not come as a surprise. Governments have known for decades the province's population was aging, and they would have to cope with an ever-growing number of seniors needing care. "We're well behind the eight ball and we're trying to play catch up," Premier Susan Holt acknowledged at a recent news conference. As early as 1991, a report warned that the province had to get serious about in-home care services. The report, Enhancing Seniors' Independence: Building for the Future, drafted under Frank McKenna's Liberal government, projected the seniors' share of the population soaring from nine per cent in 1976 to a then-staggering 13.1 per cent by 2006. Last year, they made up 22.9 per cent. Without a policy shift, "inappropriate admissions" to hospitals and nursing homes would fill up available beds — a costly option compared to home care, according to the 34-year-old report. WATCH | 'There is no political will': 3 decades of warnings: A nursing home wait-list crisis that everyone saw coming 1 hour ago Government reports dating back more than 30 years warned that an aging New Brunswick population required a shift to more home care. Both parties have known for the last 20 to 30 years that this tsunami was coming," said Florence Parks, a 76-year-old Saint John resident and former nursing home employee who contacted CBC News this week. "Nobody did anything about it." Holt lamented at her July 17 news conference "a history of not moving quickly enough to transform how we deliver care in New Brunswick. And so we have a perfect storm." Earlier in the week, Horizon issued a public plea for the province to grant "critical state admission prioritization status" for more than 650 hospital patients who did not need acute care but were waiting for placement in a long-term care facility such as a nursing home. "It causes emergency department wait times to grow longer. It forces care to be delivered in hallways, dining areas, lounges, and other makeshift spaces — conditions that are far from ideal for patients, families, and staff," CEO Margaret Melanson said. Holt's government agreed to the measure for 30 days. The premier said the estimates of how many people need care in nursing homes and special-care homes "has increased and increased and increased" faster than the creation of beds in such facilities — despite the trend being well-known for a long time. "We live in an aging society and with that brings different challenges," Progressive Conservative premier Bernard Lord said during the 2006 election campaign. "Seniors need more senior care." He was visiting the construction site of a nursing home outside Saint John, a project that had been delayed multiple times. He said the new home would "ease some of the pressure from what is often called bed-blockers" in New Brunswick hospitals. But Lord didn't promise any additional new nursing homes in that campaign. Nor did the leader who defeated him, Liberal Shawn Graham. "Home care has to come first and foremost, but will they fix it?" said Cecile Cassista, executive director of the Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents' Rights. "I've been saying that for 20 years: 'You need to fix it.' And they're not fixing it." "There's no political will. If there was, they'd do it. They make lots of promises during elections. But there is no will to fix the issue. They know there's an issue, but they only jump on it when there's a crisis." Last week, Holt blamed the Progressive Conservative government of Blaine Higgs for not moving fast enough on primary care to head off the pressure facing hospitals this summer. And home care "hasn't really had any attention over the last number of years," she said. The 1991 McKenna government report forecasting an aging population and calling for more home care, was the first of many. But leaders often focused their promises elsewhere. In 2006, Lord and Graham sparred over who would do more, and who would move faster, to exempt seniors' assets from the calculation of what they pay toward nursing home costs — in other words, to put a larger share of the expense on taxpayers. A subsequent report by the province's auditor-general concluded such policy changes contributed to huge increases to the waiting list for nursing home care. Population of seniors is over 196,000 A 2008 Graham government report on senior care, "Be Independent. Longer," also called for expanded home care. That report underestimated how much the population was aging, projecting that 188,300 New Brunswickers would be 65 years old or older by 2026. But Statistics Canada estimated last year the number was already above 196,000. In 2012, PC premier David Alward said the potential cost of caring for a larger and larger cohort of seniors kept him awake at night. Alward commissioned a report that called for New Brunswickers to "fundamentally change the way they view aging and the role of older adults." A 2017 report for the Liberal government of Brian Gallant also warned of an aging population. It called for more provincial support for home care programs, which it said was in "a sorry stage." At that time, Horizon hospitals were looking after an average of 466 alternative-level-of-care patients — people who could have been in nursing homes or special care homes. The number increased to 480 in 2018-19, dipped for three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was pushing 500 in 2022-23. It surpassed 600 this year. One government attempted bold action during that time: the PC government of Blaine Higgs launched a reform in 2019 eliminate night-time emergency care at six small hospitals and turn them into alternative-level-of-care facilities with a total of 120 beds. But the ER reductions were so unpopular, Higgs backed down within days. Expansion of Nursing Homes Without Walls program Last week, when the Holt government agreed to Horizon's request to put alternative-level-of-care patients at the top of the nursing home wait list, it was unable to say how many people might actually be transferred. On Monday, the province agreed to a similar request from the Vitalité Health Network for the Chaleur Regional Hospital in Bathurst. The Liberals hope an expansion of the Nursing Homes Without Walls program, put in place by Higgs, will make it easier for some seniors to remain in their homes — and make more beds available for transfers from hospitals. The program provides some nursing home-style services to seniors living in their own homes. "We're starting to see some of that work snowball a bit, but there's a lot more to be done," Holt said. She also acknowledged that the performance target she set for nursing homes in her state of the province speech in January may seem underwhelming. The goal is to keep the provincial waiting list exactly where it was at the time — 1,088 patients — until 2028. Given the growing number of seniors in need of care, even that isn't easy, Holt said. "The current demographic projections would see the number of people waiting in hospitals and waiting at home for those beds going up exponentially," she said. "And so for us, it was the the best we believed we could do was reduce that exponential increase, such that we were maintaining the list as is." That's not a great forecast for hospital administrators, but Holt said other initiatives, such as improvements to primary care, should ease the pressure further. And after more than three decades of warnings, simply preventing the problem from getting worse would represent a grim achievement.
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Bills mounting for family of young N.S. woman in ICU after second lung transplant
In the weeks leading up to her daughter's second double lung transplant, Lisa Ali of Cole Harbour, N.S., said she was scared to answer the phone, unsure of who would be on the other end. For more than a year, she and her 20-year-old daughter, Tahlia Ali, had been living in Toronto waiting for the life-saving surgery that is not available in Nova Scotia. That wait comes at an out-of-pocket cost for Nova Scotians — once a patient is put on the transplant list, they must move to Toronto, wait for their match, and stay for months post-surgery to recover. "I was living off my credit card and I had no way to pay it," said Lisa Ali in an interview. "I'm waiting for phone calls for lungs, but the only people that are calling me is creditors." The Alis are one of three Nova Scotia families who have spoken to CBC News in recent months about the financial devastation they have faced while waiting for their loved one to access lung transplant surgery in a different province. The Ali family said a lack of financial support from federal and provincial governments has created an immense strain during an already fraught time. One month after her most recent transplant, Tahlia Ali remains in intensive care. One of the lungs didn't take and had to be removed. "She has a lot of complications from this surgery this time around that we were not expecting," said her grandmother, Judy Robichaud. "We were expecting by this time she'd be out of ICU ... But even the doctors don't know what to expect. They're taking it one day at a time." 1st transplant in 2020 Tahlia Ali was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension when she was seven. At the time, the family was told the condition was fatal and the only treatment was a lung transplant. She had her first transplant in 2020, when she was 16. Her family was just getting back on their feet in Nova Scotia when she developed new issues, and learned she needed another transplant. "Tahlia, right now, she's fighting," said Robichaud. "We have to go the distance because she is." Adding to the strain is the issue of money. Lisa Ali said most people don't realize that a condition of being on the lung transplant list is to have a full-time caregiver. That person cannot work, as it's their job to get the patient to the hospital for multiple appointments a week, and make sure the patient gets all of their medications. Ali thought she would qualify for employment insurance caregiving benefits when she left her job to go to Toronto, but she was shocked to learn she was less than 10 hours short of qualifying. A statement from Employment and Social Development Canada said she could have appealed that decision, but needed to do so within a 30-day window. Ali said she was overwhelmed, as she had just days to move out of her rental home, find a place to live in Toronto and get to her daughter's first appointment. "I was like, 'I don't have the energy to appeal that,'" she told CBC News. While Nova Scotia offers an allowance of $3,000 a month to families who have to live out of province long term for medical treatment, that only covers the family's rent in Toronto. Ali estimates she's racked up $20,000 in debt covering additional expenses. Now that her granddaughter is facing serious complications, Robichaud expects it will be another year before they get home. She said people have been rallying behind them, offering what they can to help make ends meet. On Saturday, Colleen's Pub in Dartmouth held an event for the family, bringing in more than $5,000. "I don't know how they would be able to manage up there if it wasn't for our family and our friends hanging in there with us and helping to support what's happening right now. I'm just unbelievably grateful for them," Robichaud said. Robichaud and Lisa Ali said both the provincial and federal governments need to do more to help families like theirs, and they plan to work with other Nova Scotia families who are advocating for change. Health Minister Michelle Thompson told CBC News last month that she sympathizes with families who are in similar situations, but said the health-care system is stretched in many directions and the department has to make tough choices. She said Nova Scotia is unique compared to other provinces because it covers some of the travel expenses of the support person who must go with the patient. "We'll continue to review that program, to hear from people. We want to be responsive," Thompson said at the time. "But it isn't a cost-recovery program and we also want to maintain the integrity of the entire system, and I know that's difficult."
CTV News
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‘Having people in place overnight might have saved my brother': Sister reacts to funding for an overnight outreach van in Fredericton
The federal government is spending $2.8 million to combat the overdose crisis across Atlantic Canada. Sarah Plowman has the details.
