B.C.'s chief coroner gives government C- on handling of toxic drug crisis

Lisa Lapointe is down to her last few days as B.C.'s chief coroner, a role she’s held for 13 years, dealing with thousands of deaths in the province.

On Thursday she told CTV News she’s retiring with mixed emotions, knowing that there’s more work to do amid the toxic drug crisis that claimed a record 2,511 lives in 2023.

“Our province really is in a terrible crisis with the drug toxicity deaths, and the BC Coroner's Service has been in the eye of that storm,” said Lapointe, referring to the work its done investigating those deaths.

She is adament that a safer non-prescription supply of drugs — including fentanyl and cocaine — is critical to saving lives. It’s a recommendation the province has repeatedly rejected.

“If we had acted sooner — and in a bigger more courageous — hundreds of those people didn’t need to die,” said Lapointe from her office in downtown Victoria.

She gives the provincial government low marks for its handling of the crisis, which was first declared in 2016 and has claimed nearly 14,000 lives in the past seven-and-a-half years. She notes it hasn’t adopted any recommendations from coroner’s death review panels.

“The government has not implemented any of them — to any scale — so, if I had to do a grade, that would be a C-,” said Lapointe.

She makes no apologies for advocating for decriminalization or being supportive of permitting public drug use — ideas that have met with political or public backlash.

“We can’t not make the recommendations that will save lives, because people don’t want to hear them,” she said.

And she makes a bleak prediction if dramatic steps to provide more safer drugs aren’t taken.

"We will see another 2,500 deaths next year," she said.

Lapointe cites the heat dome three summers ago that claimed over 800 lives as another major challenge in her career.

“(It) put pressure on every response system our province has — ambulance, police, hospitals, the coroner’s service — it caught us all of guard, frankly.”

In a career that's spanned nearly 30 years of public sevice, much of dealing with death, she says she’s found great purpose in the work, including comforting those hearing the hardest truths.

“I’m sorry for your loss, what do you need from me," she said. "And then looking ahead and saying could this death be prevented and how can we prevent similar deaths in the future?”

Lapointe’s last day on the job is Feb. 18.