2nd fatal overdose of B.C. inmate in 8 days fuels calls to cancel prison needle exchange programs

Calls are growing to scrap plans for a prison needle exchange program (PNEP) at a federal institution in Agassiz, B.C., following the second fatal overdose of an inmate there in a matter of days.

The most recent death at Mountain Institution happened Wednesday morning, according to a statement by the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, which did not name the deceased.

“During their morning rounds, Correctional Officers discovered an unresponsive inmate in his cell. First aid was administered, but the inmate was pronounced dead by paramedics at 7:30 a.m.,” the union wrote Thursday.

His death comes eight days after a 44-year-old inmate named Kelly Michael Richet fatally overdosed on fentanyl, and on the heels of an announcement that a PNEP will be implemented at Mountain Institution later this year.

UCCO-SAAC-CSN’s Pacific regional president, John Randle, says the most recent death is also a suspected fentanyl overdose.

“Staff are just in shock right now, utter shock,” he told CTV News from Ottawa on Thursday.

Earlier that day, Randle met with the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada to push for supervised overdose prevention sites to be prioritized over PNEPs. Through an OPS, inmates have more access to harm reduction services and addiction treatment options.

The UCCO has spearheaded a petition calling for the CSC to cancel PNEPs and instead invest in addictions treatment.

Brad Vis, the Conservative MP for Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, is adding his voice to those calls.

In a statement Wednesday, Vis said he plans to present the petition to the House of Commons.

“Dangerous and illegal drugs are already contraband in prisons,” Vis wrote in a statement Wednesday. “Yet the Liberal government has directed the Correctional Service of Canada to provide needles for inmates to inject substances they aren’t supposed to have in their possession. This makes no sense.”

PNEPs have existed in Canadian prisons since 2018, following a court decision that ruled inmates have the right to access clean needles. In the years since, nine federal institutions have implemented the program—including two in B.C.

The following year, Alberta’s Drumheller Institution became the first federal prison to set up an OPS. A second one began at Nova Scotia’s Springhill Institution in July 2023.

When asked how it decides which prisons get to have an OPS, the CSC told CTV News the sites are selected based on population health needs—including data on overdoses at the institutions, many of which are due to opioids.

“In recognition that substance use is a health issue, CSC has implemented a range of prevention, treatment, and harm reduction measures to work with incarcerated individuals in response to this need and to help prevent lethal overdoses,” the federal agency said in a statement Thursday.

CSC was not able to provide data on overdoses—fatal or otherwise—by deadline, but emphasized that inmates are required to go through a threat risk assessment before they can participate in PNEPs.

Randle argues that strategy is illogical.

“You can do a threat risk assessment for an inmate that has good behaviour and may not stab anyone with a needle, but we’re not debating that. We’re debating that you can do a TRA on drugs that somehow illegally got into the prison,” he explained.

While neither of the inmates at Mountain Institution died after injecting drugs—it’s believed both men smoked or snorted fentanyl—Randle says their deaths highlight the failures of CSC’s approach to in-custody drug use.

“CSC needs to ask itself: If these two inmates were allowed to go to an OPS, would they still be alive?” Randle said, adding he believes the answer is “likely.”