Elliot Eurchuk died from a drug overdose in April 2018. He was 16 years old.
His devastated parents have been calling for better treatment for young people addicted to drugs and thought proposed Bill 22 would be a good step in that direction.
“You know I would have done anything to save my son’s life,” said his mom Rachel Staples. “And if that meant involuntarily placing him in a facility that could facilitate the tapering off of the drugs to get his brain to a point where he could take thoughts and make rational thoughts out of them I would have done anything to do that.”
Premier John Horgan says Bill 22, which would have held young people in hospital involuntarily for up to seven days, was a good idea.
“If clinicians determined that your well-being would benefit from two or three more days in that acute care setting and perhaps get into some other treatment regime I thought that was a good first step and I heard that from many parents,” said Horgan.
But Bill 22 has now been scrapped after the government consulted with community groups and First Nations and saw too many similarities between First Nations and colonization.
“This is just replicating the ways in which colonial society has controlled indigenous families and indigenous children and indigenous parents all the way through residential schools, the 60s scoop and even if it’s well-intentioned to save children’s lives we have to be aware of the ongoing impact of state intervention in indigenous families,” said Kasari Govender, BC Human Right’s Commissioner.
Rachel Staples says she understands Indigenous concerns but thinks there had to be a way to make Bill 22 a reality.
“In collaboration with the medical officer from the indigenous community I think it could have been well-managed but without that collaborative approach I think it would have been perceived very badly,” she said.
Nearly 130 people under 19 have died in B.C. since the opioid crisis was declared in 2015, including six in the first three months of this year.
Dean Stoltz
