Amid grim opioid death projections, Ottawa faces calls to move faster on safe supply

New federal data paints a grim picture of the fatal toll the opioid crisis is having on Canadians, prompting calls for greater access to safe-supply programs.

Petra Schulz’ son Danny was a chef working in one of the best restaurants in Edmonton and was on the road to recovery from an addiction to oxycodone when one day of relapse became his last.

“He went to work on the day he died. He died after work. He had relapsed, took one more pill, and at the time, fentanyl was just emerging,” Schulz said.

The grief of losing her son prompted her to take action and connect with other parents whose children had died of opioids, eventually co-founding the now national advocacy group called Moms Stop the Harm.

Eight years later, tens of thousands more Canadians have died from drug toxicity overdoses – a total of 29,052 since 2016. And it’s a crisis that has become significantly worse in the last two years.

New data released last week by the federal government paints a grim picture of the fatal toll the opioid crisis is having on an alarming number of Canadians.

In 2021, the number of deaths reached an all-time high: 21 Canadians a day died from opioids, which represents a 162 per cent increase from 2016, and a 101 per cent increase from just the year before. A total of 7,560 Canadians lost their lives to the opioid crisis last year, up from 3,747 in 2020.

Gillian Kolla, a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, says the sharp increase in people dying from opioids is “shocking” and should be deeply concerning to all Canadians.

“The way in which this crisis has been hitting the country and exacerbated by COVID, the tremendous amount of grief and loss that this has caused within communities, I think has really not been paid attention to by any level of government over the last three years,” Kolla said.