Removal of Dr. Wilder from her Island Health harm reduction role is disgraceful. It reflects BC’s approach to the forever crisis.

Care Not Cops, Risebridge, Stop the Sweeps, Unhoused Solidarity Collective Okanagan, North Cowichan Cop Watch, Moms Stop the Harm & other groups call out bad politics polluting the healthcare system

The coerced resignation of Dr. Jess Wilder, co-founder of Doctors for Safer Drug Policy, from her harm reduction lead role at Island Health is reverberating across the province. Thirteen BC-based community groups say it sends another chill through BC’s harm reduction movement.

BC’s handling of the toxic drug emergency has been labelled a “sanctioned massacre,” and this abhorrent, coerced departure falls in line with the overall abandonment and carceral response from public institutions in lieu of substantive intervention into the crisis.

Recent attempts by various state actors to increase police power through so-called public use bans, embed law enforcement into “decriminalization”, and arrest the founders of the single most successful intervention into the crisis: the Drug User Liberation Front’s compassion club, while abandoning its members entirely, are all indicative of BC political class’ sanctioning of the crisis.

Care Not Cops, Stop the Sweeps, Unhoused Solidarity Collective Okanagan, Risebridge, P.O.W.E.R., Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy Vancouver, Law Students for Decriminalization and Harm Reduction, North Cowichan Cop Watch, Moms Stop the Harm, Vancouver Island University Harm Reduction Alliance, Solidarity Sundays Kelowna and DULF Solidarity Committee – community groups from around the province – have joined together to condemn Island Health’s chain of actions and what it represents.

We are still in a public health emergency – and we deserve to live.

Dr. Wilder was removed from the harm reduction lead role at Island Health after contributing to the implementation of life-saving overdose prevention pop-up sites in the city of Nanaimo, on the never ceded lands of the Snuneymuxw, Snaw-naw-as, and Stzuminus peoples.

As healthcare workers, practitioners, drug users and community advocates, we have a duty to provide and advocate for life-saving and sustaining services and an overdose prevention site (OPS) certainly meets those ethical and moral obligations. It is disturbing that Island Health has failed to provide such services to us, our peers, and the broader communities they serve.

It is even more distressing that the health authority extended their power to terminate one of the few physician leaders advocating for the implementation of this vital hospital-based community service, and challenging the province’s abandonment of the crisis.

“Organizations speak with their actions, not with their words. To see a health authority that supposedly values ‘excellent health and care for everyone, everywhere, every time’ punish my colleague for speaking up and turn to a securitized response against many of their own staff is deeply disappointing to say the least,” says Dr. Ryan Herriot, who is also with DSDP.

“Dr. Wilder is a shining example for us all, showing the way to fulfill our oath in the most meaningful and impactful way possible. We will continue to hold the government accountable for its total failure to take this crisis seriously, and to press for the evidence-based solutions that would save lives and in fact be easy to implement.”

Hospital-based overdose prevention services are well established in other jurisdictions, with demonstrated outcomes that support access to service and are considered necessary, life-saving, and evidence-informed.

Yet the BC NDP have infected institutionalized evidence-based overdose responses with ugly political interference, which in turn, has been implemented by corporate healthcare careerists in the face of a mass death and disabling event.

“It is typical of health authorities, particularly those within managerial roles, to use shadowy methods to push out the practitioners who care about the toxic drug crisis and those of us at risk of dying,” says Tyson Singh Kelsall, a social worker in Vancouver and PhD candidate in Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences. “It is one big reason that a public health emergency could be allowed to last a decade.”

Documents released earlier this year showed that the BC government scrapped existing plans for lifesaving overdose prevention services at hospitals, and Richmond City Councillor Kash Heed alleged that David Eby personally interfered against the Richmond hospital site. Yaletown OPS in Vancouver was also shuttered from its busy location, and Surrey still only has one supervised consumption site in total.

Order M488 from the BC Minister of Health has been in place since 2016, and says that overdose prevention services should be opened when and where needed, as determined by the level of overdose morbidity and mortality.

By October 2024, 20% of BC’s unregulated drug deaths were within Island Health Authority’s jurisdiction, and over half of people died in private residences. This underscores the need to follow the public recommendations from Island Health’s Mental Health & Substance Use Services to develop OPS as safety mechanisms in the context of an unregulated and toxic drug supply. Yet Island Health fails to uphold these standards by refusing to permit this service in hospital settings. Island Health is not only violating Order M488 where there is desperate need, but are actively silencing an expert they hired for exceeding the expectations of her role.

Heather Tunold, a harm reduction educator and person who uses drugs in Surrey, says, “As healthcare workers, we share a collective responsibility to reduce harm and take the necessary actions. If I were to submit to the pressures of a system that delays or restricts life-saving services to those at risk of death and structural violence, I would betray my community and all I stand for.”

Echoing the brave leaders quoted above, we, as individuals and organizations in service to our communities, stand in solidarity with Dr. Wilder. We urge Island Health to permit, fund and build permanent hospital-based OPS where needed, to better meet the needs of the public who Island Health is funded and legislated to serve.

We raise our hands to Dr. Wilder and we encourage other service providers, particularly physicians, to follow her lead in joining community leadership to combat the crisis that the province has not only abandoned for years–but now appears to be championing.