At 'the frontest of front lines' of Canada's overdose crisis, new efforts at getting people off drugs

Article content

“Word has gotten out” in the neighbourhood about the navigator program over the last year-and-a-half, said navigator Hali Hoben. “It’s almost a daily thing now where people approach me on the street, asking me if I can help them get detox or treatment.”

Article content

“This is going to be the epicentre right here,” he said Tuesday in the Ashtrey. “I look forward to getting some more results, and helping people bridge that gap between being out here on the streets in active addiction and connecting to resources that a lot of people have trouble finding.”

Article content

For the first time, society recovery navigators will have access to a dedicated recovery bed in a facility in east Vancouver operated by Together We Can, a local non-profit. That bed is funded by a grant from the charity Hockey Helps the Homeless,

Article content

People can stay in that bed for a 90-day recovery program that includes counselling, medical care, nutritious food, fitness training, and community meetings. After that, they can move into one of the 250 sober-living beds in Together We Can’s network of dozens of buildings spread around the province.

Article content

Article content

“I think we could probably have 20 beds … ,” said Steven Hall, who is Together We Can’s director of fund development and engagement and also secretary of the society’s board of directors. “But one is a start.”

Article content

Claire Rattée, the B.C. Conservatives critic for mental health and addictions, sees these new facilities as part of a broader shift for the B.C. NDP government, which she says is long overdue, but marks an improvement.

Article content

“It’s a bit of a change in the narrative that we’re seeing coming from the government, and I think that it’s a good change,” said Rattée, the MLA for Skeena. “We’re starting to move towards more of a recovery-oriented framework. It’s very slow and it’s very piecemeal, but it is starting to happen.”

Article content

In recent years, the B.C. NDP has walked back some harm-reduction policies, including recriminalizing open drug use, and limiting access to safer-supply drugs.

Article content

Rattée said the province is “recognizing they got it wrong,” and trying to balance that with the more stringent harm-reduction activists who form part of their base.

Article content

“I do think we’re starting to see a slow shift in the right direction. It’s just going to take a very long time to undo all of the mess that they’ve already created.”

Article content

Article content

Average wait times for detox across B.C. have dropped from 10.1 days in 2024-25 to six days in 2025-26, the Health Ministry said this week. In Vancouver, where a new model of addictions care called Road to Recovery was launched in late 2023, the median detox wait time for routine clients fell from 26 days to eight days, the province said, and urgent clients saw a median wait of only one day.

Article content

Community members and aid workers have said these reductions in detox wait times have been important. And just about everyone agrees there’s a need for facilities that connect people with detox and recovery when they want it.

Article content

But they also all agree there’s a serious shortage of capacity, with not nearly enough publicly funded recovery beds in B.C. to meet demand when people get out of detox.

Article content

Hall estimates B.C. is hundreds of beds short of what’s needed. But, he said, there’s still significant value to places like the Ashtrey and the Junction.

Article content

“It gives people who are entrenched in this lifestyle the opportunity to learn more about recovery, to see it’s possible,” Hall said. “A lot of people don’t even understand what recovery actually means.”

Article content

Article content

Article content