B.C. health minister promises revamped approach to overdose crisis after addictions portfolio scrapped
CTV
British Columbia's new health minister says she's aiming for more treatment beds and fewer deaths in a revamped approach to the province's drug overdose crisis.
British Columbia's new health minister says she's aiming for more treatment beds and fewer deaths in a revamped approach to the province's drug overdose crisis.
It comes after David Eby's newly elected government eliminated the stand-alone Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, which advocates say had no "teeth."
The former ministry was created in 2017 to provide co-ordinated responses to the toxic drug crisis, which has killed more than 15,000 people in the past eight years, but it has now been absorbed into the Health Ministry.
"Certainly, I really do think the time is right to fold the ministry back into the Ministry of Health," said Josie Osborne, who was appointed health minister last week, replacing former minister Adrian Dix.
"I think we're in a much better position to expedite action and decision making," Osborne said in an interview. "Now is the time to bring that together. The premier's been very clear he expects an all-of-government approach to this."
The B.C. Coroners Service says 1,749 people have died of toxic drug overdoses so far this year. Last year the service reported 2,551 overdose deaths, the most ever recorded in a single year in the province.
"We are going to do everything possible that we can to reduce the number of deaths and the impacts on people and families," Osborne said. "This is one of the toughest challenges our government, our society, that B.C. faces and one of our government's top priorities. The key here is helping people and doing everything we can from all different approaches to reduce the number of deaths and to help people recover and be well."
Regina is digging itself out yet again – mere days after it was slammed with the first major snowfall of the season.
A Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) officer is recovering after he was stabbed in the throat Sunday evening.
With Black Friday sales already in play and with Christmas a month away, the holiday shopping season is underway as Statistics Canada revealed last week the country's inflation rate climbed back up to two per cent in October. But even though the two-per-cent increase is in line with Bank of Canada targets, one Alberta-based economist says Canadians are "going to be very cautious," because while inflation has slowed down, prices haven't gone down.
When Jennifer Ogg signed up an Ironman race in Cozumel, Mex., she had no idea that months later, she’d get the call to be inducted into the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame.
A family in Riverview, N.B., is making plans for Christmas and the future after escaping a fire in their home on November, 14.
A pedestrian has been rushed to the hospital after being hit by the driver of a vehicle in Toronto’s west end.
Second Cup Café has closed one of its franchise locations in Montreal following allegations of hateful remarks and gestures made by the franchisee in a video that was widely circulated online during a pro-Palestinian protest on Thursday.
For a while there, Lions Festival of Lights chair Otto Silzer was worried there wouldn’t be any snow to decorate the light show.
The snowfall warning for Calgary has been lifted after a Saturday snowstorm socked the city, but there are still flurries in the forecast for Sunday.
A member of the Vancouver Police Board was asked to resign after social media posts surfaced that made her continued service on the oversight body “untenable,” according to the chair.
One year after a couple was shot and killed in their Caledon home in what investigators have described as a case of mistaken identity, Ontario Provincial Police say they are still trying to figure out who pulled the trigger.