Overdose bereavement bill on hold

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This article was published 25/05/2022 (1380 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Frustration is growing among advocates as a bill to recognize people who have died from drug overdoses has stalled in the Manitoba legislature.

Earlier this year, NDP mental health and addictions critic Bernadette Smith put forward a private member’s bill to designate the Sunday before Mother’s Day a day of bereavement for Manitobans who have died from substance use.

Smith said she was hoping the bill would pass by June 1 before the summer break. However, the bill stalled in the legislature Tuesday. It received second reading in April.

“People are dying right now, and we could be standing up as leaders right now and supporting this bill to reduce the stigma,” Smith said.

It is a symbolic gesture to have this day, and an important one, Smith said. To have a public acknowledgment from the government on this issue would signal to families that ending stigma around substance use is being taken seriously.

She said by designating the date around Mother’s Day, the NDP isn’t trying to take away from moms. Rather, this is meant as a day of support and bereavement for everyone affected by substance-use deaths.

The government has the power to read, pass and send the bill to committee quickly, she said, especially if it has garnered support in previous readings.

House leader Kelvin Goertzen said on Tuesday it’s a scheduling issue, adding Smith was creating a “false emergency” by insisting the bill needed to pass before the house rises next week.

“We’re sitting until November, so there’s plenty of time to move on that and other bills,” he said, emphasizing that his party is committed to passing a bereavement bill.

“My father died from addictions. It’s important to me, too,” Goertzen said.

This isn’t the end of the bill, Smith said. She’s also urging the passage of Bill 217, the Fatality Inquiry Amendments Act, to get the provincial government to change how it collects data on drug overdoses, including the number and type of substance involved.

Solange Machado, co-ordinator for Brandon’s Harm Reduction Network, said she is disappointed by the bill sitting idle.

The network has been actively petitioning the government and the public on the bill’s passage so it can make an impact sooner.

“We are really hurting for the families who I work with daily who have lost people that are deeply impacted by overdoses,” she said. “They say they are going to talk about it, but when?”

The slow movement on both these bills shows the government isn’t taking its responsibility to those who die of substance-use disorders seriously, said advocate Kim Longstreet.

“To support Bernadette’s bereavement bill and Bill 217 would mean they have to take ownership for their lack of attention to our province’s addiction crisis,” she said.

By failing to acknowledge how badly substance users are treated by the system, Longstreet said, the government can avoid the inevitable fallout.

There is some hope in the fact people are talking publicly more often about how substance use is hurting so many people, she said. The more people talk about it, the harder it will be for the government to not move on making improvements to the health-care system.

» kmckinley@brandonsun.com, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press and The Brandon Sun

» Twitter: @karenleighmcki1