‘A year of complete inaction:’ Mercredi reflects on deadly, record-setting overdose crisis in 2020

Heading into 2020, Jason Mercredi was looking for one thing in particular.

Heading into 2021, the executive director of Prairie Harm Reduction (PHR) said he’s looking for that same thing yet again.

“We were patiently waiting for news on government funding (heading into 2020) and we were fairly hopeful. Of course, we didn’t receive it and so we scrambled … It has definitely been an exhausting year,” he said Tuesday.

The provincial funding for the Saskatoon safe consumption site has still not come in. Mercredi has said in the past that PHR would need $1.3 million to operate at the level the city needs, 24/7.

Regardless of the lack of funding, PHR still opened its doors Oct. 1. It opened amid an overdose crisis that continues to worsen.

So far in the first 11 months of 2020, 323 confirmed or suspected drug toxicity deaths have been recorded in the province, according to the Saskatchewan Coroners Service.

The facility opened on a community-based fundraising budget, fuelled in part by an online clothing store launched by PHR. Mercredi said he believes the store has continued to push the message and conversations about addictions and overdose even further, aside from being a successful endeavour for PHR.

As the year wrapped up, another safe consumption site looks to be making its way to Saskatchewan.

“The second one will be opening up in Regina, so we started hopeful and, thank goodness, we’re ending up on a hopeful note,” Mercredi said.

When the doors opened at Saskatoon’s safe consumption site, there was no large celebration or grand opening. Mercredi said he’d wait to get the funding secured before that would happen.

Still, now open for three months, Mercredi said the facility has created change.

“We’re seeing the talk around addictions and people’s addictions improve. They now feel a sense of hope. They feel like they belong, which is really what we’re going for. That’s going to connect them to services. Connecting them to the community, it’s going to do much better for their treatment outcomes and getting them down that path to recovery,” he said.

People still tell PHR staff they’d like the site to be open later, but Mercredi added those accessing services have been able to see PHR from a different standpoint as the facility has grown: As employees.

“That has been probably the biggest benefit is people are feeling like they can contribute to their family; they’re earning an income. That has probably been the biggest success at the end of the year. We’ve been able to hire a number of folks back in the building and doing outreach on the street,” he explained.

With COVID dominating headlines throughout this past year, Mercredi explained the effect it has had on PHR.

“(COVID has) for sure made the overdose crisis much, much worse,” he said. “This is by far our highest overdose deaths ever. But this is not going to go away when COVID goes away.

“When we’re talking about the overdose crisis, it has been made worse from the closure of the borders and things like that, but this is the second epidemic that we’re not talking about. The amount of people that have died is not OK. The amount of inaction that we’re seeing is not OK.”

A COVID outbreak also closed down the doors of PHR for a short time in November.

Troy Davies, the director of public affairs at Medavie Health Services West, said Tuesday they’ve had a delay in reporting calls, but they saw a spike in overdose calls through 2020 and are administering Narcan at an all-time high.

“I can accurately say that we’re giving (Narcan) at least two to three times every 12 hours per shift (in Saskatoon). That’s something that’s higher than what it was last year for sure, or any other year, by far,” he explained.

Davies said it’s no secret that depression and mental health had a huge impact on the rising overdose numbers and didn’t downplay the impacts of COVID’s role in the crisis.

When looking forward to 2021, Mercredi has a few things on his new year wish list.

“First and foremost, we’re looking for funding from the provincial government; we’ve been pretty clear on that one,” he said. “Next is we’d like to see the government start reporting to the public widely about the overdose crisis that’s happening in the communities.

“We still have not heard anything from the health authority publicly about the overdose crisis that hasn’t been in response to either ourselves or the police. We’d like to see government lead on this one. We’re hopeful that they’re going to be in 2021.

“We basically had a year of complete inaction.”

Mercredi stressed the need to get provincial help in 2021, and warned of more problems if the ask is not met.

“If we don’t,” he said, “we’re going to see more of the same in 2021 and that’s the last thing, I think, any of us want to see.”