Victoria shouldn’t follow Vancouver’s lead in considering property-tax increases to cover additional costs associated with fentanyl overdoses, says Mayor Lisa Helps.
“I think that by levying a property tax for something that is a health facility takes the pressure off the provincial and federal governments to provide health services,” Helps said. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Coun. Chris Coleman, however, is sure the issue will come up in budget deliberations next month. “I know the mayor wasn’t terribly pleased [with the idea] because she thought it was giving an out to senior levels of government. But if that’s your logic model, then we shouldn’t be involved in homelessness,” Coleman said. “But we are because it’s something that we see on our streets. We could make the same argument with fentanyl.”
“Of course we’ll have to get into the discussion. Whether we actually end up funding a strategy is a different question. But, yeah, it’s not just in B.C. It’s not just on our streets. It’s across the country that municipalities are having to respond and communities are having to respond,” he said.
Vancouver is considering adding a 0.5 per cent property-tax increase, raising roughly $3.5 million to be added to the city’s contingency fund of $4 million to combat the crisis.
The Vancouver Fire Department wants to hire 16 more firefighters for Fire Hall No. 2, at the corner of Powell and Main streets, to help deal with the fentanyl crisis.
Dustin Bourdeaudhuy, vice-president of Vancouver Fire Fighters’ Union Local 18, said his members are burning out due to an explosion of overdose calls.
A year ago, Vancouver firefighters were taking approximately 500 to 600 calls a month, and were one of the busiest departments in Canada. Last month, firefighters took 1,200.
Across the province, there were 622 overdose deaths from January through October, compared with 397 in the same period last year.
According to the B.C. Coroners Service, 120 people died from illicit-drug overdoses on Vancouver Island in the first 10 months of 2016. About 60 per cent involved the opioid fentanyl. By comparison, there were 60 overdose deaths on the Island in all of last year. Last week, the province announced it would open six government-sanctioned drug-injection sites — including two in Victoria — without waiting for legislative changes or approval from Ottawa.
B.C. provincial health officer Perry Kendall said the new sites are bringing together in an indoor setting injection drug users and people trained to administer naloxone — a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.
