City MP urges federal health minister to declare national emergency over toxic drug crisis

The member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre is pleading for the federal health minister to treat the city’s toxic drug crisis as a national emergency.

NDP MP Leah Gazan wrote to Health Minister Marjorie Michel, arguing an immediate response is necessary amid a crisis that has claimed nearly a dozen lives in Winnipeg in recent weeks.

“It’s very clear that we have to take a public health response to this, an aggressive public health response,” Gazan told the Free Press on Tuesday.

“This comes with a profound sense of urgency regarding the escalating loss of life in our community. Each death is a devastating and preventable tragedy that demands immediate and decisive action.”

Gazan is calling for the implementation of long-recommended reforms, including decriminalizing personal drug possession and addressing the unsafe drug supply.

“Five years ago, the Health Canada Expert Task Force on Substance Use called for a comprehensive approach to the drug crisis by decriminalizing personal drug possession, providing record expungement, and regularizing and minimizing the unregulated drug market,” Gazan wrote in the letter. “Our communities don’t have another five years to sit idly by and watch these recommendations go ignored as we witness the toll that toxic supply takes every day.”

She is pushing for increased funding for front-line services, including expanded access to harm-reduction supplies, drug-checking services, and outreach teams, along with stronger support for workers through increased staffing and better resources to address burnout.

Several front-line outreach organizations recently urged the province to declare its own public health emergency after a surge in overdose deaths this spring.

At the time, at least five deaths were attributed to drug toxicity, according to Resource Assistance for Youth, while Main Street Project reported that 10 people connected to its organization had died during the same period.

“This is the worst spring I’ve ever seen in my time, my work, in terms of the number of overdoses that we’re reversing,” Main Street Project executive director Jamil Mahmood said earlier this month.

Mahmood added that approximately 30 overdose deaths were occurring each month, on average.

“I can’t think of any other situation where we would not call a public health emergency when 30 people per month are dying,” he said.

Kate Sjoberg, executive director of Resource Assistance for Youth, said the loss has been “tremendous.”

“Outreach organizations are always serving people that have already experienced tremendous trauma in their lives,” she said at the time. “They’re often remembering other folks that they’ve lost to drug toxicity. So there’s that cumulative load of grief and loss.”

Sjoberg noted Tuesday there had been an additional death in the time since.

The province is considering an opening date for its first supervised drug consumption site at 366 Henry Ave.

Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre of Winnipeg told the Free Press this month it is ready to begin operating a mobile site in the parking lot at that location until renovations to the building are completed.

On Friday, Premier Wab Kinew said the site would open soon, but did not provide a specific date.

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Street Connections, which issues drug alerts in the province, reported that medetomidine — a veterinary tranquillizer — was detected in Winnipeg’s drug supply in February.

The drug, which can cause heavy sedation, slowed heart rate and breathing issues, is being linked to the spike in overdose deaths. Naloxone, an overdose-reversing medication, is not effective against medetomidine because it is not an opioid, though the substance is often found mixed with fentanyl.

Gazan, meanwhile, said the stigma needs to be lessened around the supervised consumption site.

“Certainly, one of the things that I’ve said is that our whole community has become a consumption site, except it’s not safe,” she said. “We need to make sure that that community is actively engaged in the decision-making and discussions. We know harm reduction saves lives.”

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.