Health Minister Terry Lake says he'll leave office with goals on mental health and addiction left unachieved

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      Health Minister Terry Lake struggles to come up with ideas when asked what’s next in the fight against B.C.’s rising number of overdose deaths.

      “We just need to continue on,” he told the Straight at a March 28 news conference at Vancouver General Hospital, “increasing the resources that are available, to be ready when people are seeking treatment.”

      In Vancouver, it appears that the opposite has happened.

      A review of financial reports for Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), the regional provider responsible for the City of Vancouver and Richmond, shows that while overdose deaths have skyrocketed, VCH has allocated less for mental health and substance use.

      In 2013, it spent $290 million on mental health and addiction. That number declined by one percent the following year, remained stable in 2015, and then, last year, dropped by four percent, to $275 million.

      Since 2013, the number of fatal overdoses in B.C. increased from 330 to 992 last year.

      During the same period, the City of Vancouver declared a “mental-health crisis” and Vancouver police apprehensions under the Mental Health Act rose from 2,276 in 2010 to 3,050 in 2015.

      In a telephone interview, VCH spokesperson Gavin Wilson maintained that the situation isn’t as bad as it looks. He explained that VCH once paid for operations at the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction. That money is still being spent but no longer by VCH; instead, it’s funded by the Provincial Health Services Authority. Similarly, HIV/AIDS programming was once lumped in with VCH spending on mental health and addictions but now receives its own line in budget documents.

      “This is a matter of funding shifting around from one category to another,” Wilson said. “We could always use more funding for just about any program, but there are limits to how much we can take from the public purse.”

      But during the same period that VCH appears to be spending less on mental health and addiction, the provincial government gave the regional authority smaller annual increases in funding.

      In 2009, the B.C. government’s contribution to VCH was up seven percent over the previous year. By 2012, the increase was down to four percent over 2011. In 2015, VCH actually received one percent less from the province than it did in 2014. In 2016, however, B.C. gave VCH five percent more than it did in 2015.

      TRAVIS LUPICK / B.C. CORONERS SERVICE

      Lake acknowledged the health authorities are trying to do more with less.

      “We knew that health care was unsustainable, going up six percent every year,” he said. “I think everyone is coming to grips with this. If you look across the provinces, you’ll see that the increases back in ’06 to ’08, ’09 were significantly bigger than they have been since 2013 to today.”

      Lake was elected as the MLA of Kamloops–North Thompson and has served as B.C.’s health minister since June 2013. He has announced he won’t seek reelection this coming May.

      Asked what work he feels he is leaving unfinished on mental health and addiction, Lake paused for a moment.

      “There are always things left undone,” he said. “Your need to achieve all your objectives is always going to exceed your capacity to do so.”

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