Michael Lewis
Special to Ontario Construction News staff writer
While welcoming former RCMP deputy commissioner Kevin Brosseau’s appointment as Canada’s new ‘fentanyl czar,’ mental health organizations say Ontario leadership candidates need to sharpen their focus on an overdose crisis that has taken a disproportionate toll on construction workers.
According to medical school researchers at the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network, 60 per cent of people who died from opioid toxicity were employed and one third of those worked in the construction industry.
Opioid-related hospitalizations and deaths are higher among workers in the construction, mining and oil and gas sectors, the network says, with its latest quarterly Ontario summary showing Thunder Bay, Timmins, and Sault Ste. Marie among cities with the highest incidence of opioid-related deaths.
Jennifer Holmes Weier, CEO of Addictions and Mental Health Ontario, said given Ottawa’s increased effort to stem the flow of illegal opioids across the U.S.-Canada border, in exchange for a 30-day reprieve on U.S. tariffs, candidates for the premier’s job should fully outline their addictions recovery platforms on the campaign trail.
“These efforts must include a commitment to increase investments in the people and programs which help our communities be well,” Holmes Weier said in a written statement. “Individuals cannot transition from crisis to care if they are unable to access the community-based addictions, mental health, and supportive housing services they need, when and where they need them.”
“To permanently end this crisis, there must be greater investment in community mental health and addictions services, alongside affordable and supportive housing,” added Camille Quenneville, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario Division.
“We need substantial investments by our provincial leadership to ensure we have adequate support on the ground.”
A report for the network found that between the end of 2017 and 2020 there were 428 opioid toxicity deaths in Ontario of individuals who had a history of employment in the construction industry, one out of every thirteen opioid poisoning deaths across the province over the period.
Among those construction workers who died, only one in six accessed treatments in the month prior to their passing.
Dr. Larisa Eibisch, a primary care physician and addictions specialist, said she sees tradespeople with drug dependencies related to workplace stressors including precarious and seasonal employment, stretches of long shifts, the loneliness of remote work and pressures to continue working despite painful injuries on the job.
She said more than three-quarters of opiate toxicity deaths in the trades sector happened to individuals who had a prior pain diagnosis, but only one in six had a prescription for opioid replacement medication.
“There are a lot of people in the construction industry that are at risk and not accessing care,” Dr. Eibisch told Ontario Construction News, adding that vulnerable workers are targeted by dealers who make illicit drugs readily available on job sites.
In this context, she said the Ontario government is to be commended for being the first in North America to require naloxone kits, used to reverse or ease opioids effects, at all construction workplaces in the province.
Dr. Eibisch is among a group Ontario-based health workers, pharmaceutical experts, first responders, non-profits, union leaders, and big city mayors who have united to form One Step Forward: An Alliance for Advancing Recovery that is advocating for policy changes to address fentanyl and other opioids addictions.
It has made the following recommendations to the province, based on stakeholder consultations:
- Establish an emergency task force to co-ordinate anti-addiction efforts
- Fund a virtual opioid addiction treatment service to connect more people to timely treatments
- Reform compensation models for addiction care
- Expand the list of opioid treatments pharmacists are allowed to administer to include longer lasting replacement medications
A spokeswoman for the alliance said its recommendations are intended to increase the number of Ontarians benefiting from the full continuum of treatment strategies. While the opioid crisis in the province has dramatically worsened following the Covid-19 pandemic, she said the number of Ontarians receiving treatment has remained stagnant.
She expressed hope for a positive response from health and labour ministers after the February 27 provincial election.
Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has unveiled plans to shutter ten of Ontario’s 23 supervised drug consumption sites due to their proximity to schools and childcare centres.
Ford says his government will invest $378 million to open 19 Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment hubs to add 375 addiction recovery and treatment beds, though the hubs would not be permitted to offer safe supply or supervised drug consumption.
New Democrat and Opposition leader Marit Stiles has blasted the Ford administration for what she calls an unrealistic, abstinence-based approach, while Liberal candidate Bonnie Crombie supports restoration of the Opioid Emergency Taskforce and launch of a 24/7 Opioid Assistance and Referral Line.
The Ontario Green Party on Feb. 12 became the first of Ontario’s four major parties to release a complete campaign platform ahead of the general election.
The federal Greens would create a national drug reduction strategy, develop more safe injection sites, fund community-based substance abuse prevention and rehab programs, and monitor opioid prescribing.
For Rob Trymbulak, a Windsor-Essex ironworker who has spent most of his 27 years in construction addicted to opioids, the One Step Forward Alliance proposals would help ease the pain and anxiety of addiction.
In recovery since 2016, he said his demanding work schedule contributed to addictive behaviour. “It becomes part of our way of life, to get to work and to continue to work.” The result, he said, was a life of hiding. “I was worried I’d lose my job if anyone knew I used. I was worried I’d lose my wife if she knew what I was doing.”
Still, as hopeless as things looked, he said with support “they turn around much, much faster than I would have ever imagined.”