Thursday September 25, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC [Updated September 26, 2025]
By Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Challenges to the province’s handling of drug use, overdose and rehabilitation services were delivered in remarks today by Dallas Brodie of the OneBC Party.
She addressed delegates at the 2025 convention of the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) on Wednesday in Victoria. (UBCM later apologized for not properly introducing her, as in neglecting to ask delegates to remain seated for the final portion of the morning program.)
Brodie says that non-government organizations (NGOs) are funded by the number of clients they serve not on results. She said that results in a “perverse incentive” to keep the number of clients up, and enabling the drug users but not solving the root problem.
Brodie wants to see illicit and hard drugs restigmatized as a deterrent to their use. She gave the decades-long anti-smoking campaign of a health public education effort that worked.
Brodie says drug rehabilitation requires drug-free housing — that housing should only be subsidized if the residents are not using drugs. She was referencing some of the health supports in BC that allow people who use hard drugs to continue on the drugs (weaning off, perhaps) as their treatment proceeds.
Health Minister Josie Osborne often refers to drug-care approach as helping people who aren’t best able to make decisions for themselves.
Destroying people’s health:
The use of hard drugs like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and meth is “destroying good brains” and damaging families, said Brodie yesterday.
“No more mass enabling,” says Brodie. She indirectly referred to the use of Naloxone to keep people alive but implying that the drug use would still continue.
The overdose crisis has been evident since at least 2016 when BC declared it as a health emergency, though it became overshadowed by the COVID health emergency in 2020.
Part of BC’s response to the overdose emergency has been to de-stigmatize drug use as — in part, an effort to recognize that people may fall into drug use for reasons other than their own choice and then an addiction can develop.
Cost of facilities:
Some of the new provincial health care facilities (like the upcoming Island Health 3-storey long term care facility at Metchosin Road and Latoria Boulevard in the Royal Bay area of Colwood) will have 26 beds for people with permanent brain damage — many of them young adults who incurred brain injury (vehicle crashes, drugs).
Some government programs provide supportive housing for getting people off the street. That has included buying or otherwise contracting for the use of hotels.
OneBC:
OneBC is a new provincial political party currently comprised of two MLAs who left the BC Conservative Party caucus earlier this year. Their approach is about “Fighting to secure Prosperity For All”. They are the fourth party in the House.
MLAs Dallas Brodie (Vancouver-Quilchena) is the Interim Party Leader and Tara Armstrong (Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream) is the OneBC House Leader.
Next session:
The BC Legislature resumes sitting on Monday October 6.
===== RELATED:
Three BC Conservative MLAs now sit as Independents (March 10, 2025)
260 long-term care beds for seniors coming to the west shore in 2027 (March 22, 2023)
NEWS SECTIONS: MENTAL HEALTH & ADDICTIONS | UBCM | 43rd BC PARLIAMENT | ONEBC