Vaughn Palmer: NDP still stalling on involuntary treatment for drug addicts

Vancouver Sun

24-04-2025

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VICTORIA — While the B.C. New Democrats have repeatedly promised involuntary treatment for severe drug addicts, the Alberta government has brought in legislation to do just that.
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The Compassionate Intervention Act, introduced last week, would be the first of its kind in Canada if enacted.
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The act would allow Alberta to force drug addicts into secure facilities for up to three months, or require them to complete six months of treatment in less-secure settings.
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The process is complaint driven, allowing parents, guardians, health care professionals and law enforcement to refer addicts to involuntary care. A quasi-judicial panel of experts would make the final call on whether to detain and on what conditions.
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The panel would weigh the severity of the addiction, the risk of harm to self and others, and 'negative impacts to community safety'.
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People 'in the clutches of addiction are unable to help themselves' and thereby lose the right to choose the proper response and treatment, said Premier Danielle Smith in defending the legislation.
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The Alberta minister of mental health and addictions, Dan Williams, said the province was compelled to respond to a crisis that was claiming four lives a day from overdoses of poison drugs.
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In B.C., where the equivalent statistic is six a day, the NDP government has proposed legislation for involuntary treatment several times, but has never acted on it.
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Five years ago, then-Premier John Horgan introduced legislation to allow short-term detention of young overdose victims.
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He had to withdraw the bill after the Green party, then in a power-sharing arrangement with the NDP, refused to support it.
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Soon after, Horgan repudiated the four-year power-sharing arrangement with the Greens and called an election.
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'That was really the deciding issue for me,' said Horgan in explaining the snap election call. 'Having met with parents who have lost children, I was not prepared to accept that.'
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Yet after winning the election, Horgan was in no rush to bring back the legislation. In spring 2022, he admitted that the proposal was dead, slain by a backlash from independent watchdogs, Indigenous leaders and legal experts.
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When David Eby launched his bid to succeed Horgan in the summer of 2022, one of his first pronouncements was a call for involuntary treatment of severe drug addicts.
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'When someone overdoses twice a day and they show up in the emergency ward for the second time, the idea that we release that person back into the street to overdose a third time or die or have a profound brain injury or just come back to the emergency room again seems very bizarre,' said Eby.