Federal actions on the overdose crisis

Our approach to addressing the overdose crisis and substance-use-related harms is comprehensive, equitable, collaborative and compassionate. It's guided by the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy (CDSS).

Highlights of recent federal actions

In May 2026, the Minister of Health made an order to temporarily control 2 synthetic opioids (spirochlorphine and spirobrorphine) and 1 precursor chemical (R 29676) that can be used to produce synthetic opioids. This action was undertaken to address the threat of these emerging substances finding their way into the illegal drug supply.
- Other emerging categories of synthetic opioids, such as nitazenes and orphines, are already tightly controlled in Canada. It is illegal to import these opioids into the country.
Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act, received Royal Assent on March 2026, and Bill C-22, An Act Respecting Lawful Access, was announced, to ensure that law and border enforcement have the right tools to:
- keep the borders secure
- stop the flow of illegal fentanyl
- fight transnational organized crime
- crack down on money laundering
- protect Canada while upholding our privacy and Charter rights
Appointed a Fentanyl Czar to work with all levels of the Canadian government and with U.S. counterparts to help stop the production and trafficking of illegal fentanyl
Released Canada's Border Plan with $1.3 billion in targeted investments to:
- boost border security
- strengthen our immigration system
- disrupt and reduce the illegal trade of fentanyl and precursor chemicals
  - $30.7 million to set up the Precursor Chemical Risk Management Unit to increase oversight of precursor chemicals and distribution channels, and to enhance monitoring and surveillance to support timely law enforcement action against illegal synthetic drug trade
  - $48 million to establish the Canadian Drug Analysis Centre, expanding our drug testing lab capacity and analysis capabilities with advanced chemical profiling of synthetic substances to identify patterns and trends in production, distribution, and origin
  - Establishing a North American Joint Strike Force to target transnational organized crime, precursor chemicals, and illegal substances, including fentanyl.
Provided $200 million to support enhanced intelligence gathering and sharing on transnational organized crime and fentanyl, including through the launch of the Joint Operational Intelligence Cell, to strengthen existing collaboration among law enforcement and security agencies, combat money laundering and drug trafficking, and improve border security
Provided $150 million for municipalities and Indigenous communities through Health Canada's Emergency Treatment Fund (ETF). The fund aims to provide a rapid response to emergent, critical needs related to the illegal drug crisis.
- 30 new projects have been approved for funding through a recent call for proposals. These projects began in spring 2026, allocating the remaining ETF resources to address urgent community needs
- To date, ETF has committed more than $134 million to 136 projects, with 62 projects currently active
Provided $8.8 million over 2 years (starting in fiscal year 2025 to 2026 ) for Canada’s Black Justice Strategy to expand culturally-appropriate mental health supports and substance use programming for Black Canadians

We're committed to a public health and safety approach that:

connects people to vital services
reduces stigma around substance use
builds evidence to support decision making
supports prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery efforts
protects the safety of our communities from illegal drugs and drug-related crimes

Learn more:

Funds committed to address the overdose crisis

We have committed significant funding to the illegal drug crisis.

Examples of key federal investments:

$25 billion through the Working Together to Improve Health Care for Canadians agreements to support improving access to quality mental health and substance use services, with an additional $2 billion over 10 years to support Indigenous health initiatives
Over $758 million through the Substance Use and Addiction Program for more than 465 innovative community-based pilot projects since 2017, including:
- medication-assisted therapies for people with opioid use disorder, including opioid agonist therapy (OAT)
- projects to help reduce stigma and support families affected by the crisis
- initiatives to reach key groups in British Columbia, including Indigenous peoples, youth, individuals in the correctional system and health care providers
- peer support and capacity-building projects
- projects to support effective pain management practices, including best practices for the use of opioids for pain management
Over $650 million over 2 years (starting in fiscal year 2026 to 2027) towards trauma-informed, culturally grounded, community-based mental wellness initiatives, including:
- substance use prevention and treatment
- 77 Mental Wellness Teams in 390 First Nations and Inuit communities
- Hope for Wellness Help Line
$5 billion through Reaching Home to support communities in addressing and preventing homelessness
$72.1 million through the Veteran Homelessness Program's Services and Support Stream to deliver rent supplements and wrap-around services to veterans experiencing or at risk of homelessness
$1 billion in capital funding through Build Canada Homes (BCH) to build new supportive and transitional housing for people experiencing or at imminent risk of homelessness
- BCH is collaborating with provincial, territorial, municipal, and Indigenous partners to ensure the necessary health and social supports, such as substance use supports, are paired with the housing units
$500 million for the Youth Mental Health Fund to help younger people in Canada access the mental health care they need
$20.2 million for the Youth Substance Use Prevention Program to:
- support 13 community-based projects in developing tailored approaches to preventing and delaying youth substance use
- establish a Knowledge Development and Exchange Hub for Youth Substance Use Prevention in Canada
$17 million to the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Matters to conduct research and knowledge mobilization activities focused on substance use harms, as well as:
- $2.85 million to evaluate the impacts of the decriminalization exemption in B.C.
- $6 million to create a Network Coordinating Centre to support knowledge sharing and training and an Indigenous Engagement Platform to strengthen Indigenous engagement in research
$10.6 million annually through the Drug Treatment Court Funding Program to provinces and territories to develop, deliver and evaluate drug treatment courts. The program currently supports 25 drug treatment courts as well as several other therapeutic justice programs across Canada
$23 million to support the Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence for Canadian Veterans research program at McMaster University

Prevention and education

We have introduced a number of targeted initiatives to raise awareness of the risks of substance use and help reduce the use of substances.

These initiatives include:

the Youth Substance Use Prevention Program, based on the internationally recognized Icelandic Prevention Model, which supports 13 projects to build youth resiliency and reduce known risk factors for future substance use
a Blueprint for Action, which provides educators with tools to strengthen substance use prevention efforts in school communities
Protect Yourself, Know Your Risk, a resource to help sexual- and gender-minority young adults understand and reduce the risks of substance use
public education campaigns focusing on prevention, reducing stigma and supporting help-seeking behaviours. Key initiatives include:
- Know More Opioids youth awareness program which has reached 209,055 students since April 2018, serving as a cornerstone of youth engagement and opioid awareness education
- Reduce Your Risk experiential marketing, targeting young adults aged 18 to 24 at post-secondary institutions to raise awareness of safer substance use practices and emergency response measures
  - Reached 27,759 students across 20 schools
  - Partnered with St. John Ambulance to deliver 1,065 naloxone demonstrations
- An adapted experiential marketing tactic for men in trades piloted through booths at industry events in Toronto and Vancouver
- a new How to Administer Naloxone video to raise awareness of how to respond to an opioid overdose
- Before You Mix, Know the Risk to support sexually- and gender diverse young adults in making informed, evidence-based decisions around polysubstance use
- festival outreach, which provided information about naloxone and overdose prevention materials to share with event goers to more than 2,200 festival organizers in 2025
toolkits for specific industries including:
- a toolkit supporting employers and employees in the trades to help reduce the harms of substance use
- a toolkit for pharmacy professionals to raise awareness of stigma and promote best practices for pharmacists to support people using opioids
pain management efforts to:
- ensure pain is understood, prevented, and actions are effectively implemented as follow-up to the work of the Canadian Pain Task Force
- develop and share pain management resources through the creation of Pain Canada and the Power Over Pain Portal
- update the Canadian Guidance on the Use of Opioids for the Management of Chronic Non-Cancer Pain (PDF) and develop a new National Consensus Statement for the use of opioids for the management of post-surgical pain
- develop new national pain management standards for children, youth and adults
working with the Standards Council of Canada to develop new tools to improve understanding and coordination among mental health and substance use health care providers
supporting Thunderbird Partnership Foundation and First Peoples Wellness Circle’s National Youth Council to ensure Indigenous youth perspectives shape mental wellness and substance use policies and programs

Evidence

enhancing laboratory analysis and reporting on illegal drugs including:
- creating the Canadian Drug Analysis Centre to profile and analyze synthetic drug samples
  - this will provide domestic capacity to deliver specialized and quality drug profiling information and services to Canada’s law enforcement and public safety agencies and strategically target actions to address the synthetic drug threat
- delivering the Canadian Drug and Substance Watch, a surveillance tool that uses multiple data sources to offer insights into drug trends, by sharing laboratory confirmatory analysis data on new and emerging psychoactive substances
- expanding the National Wastewater Drug Surveillance (NWDS) initiative to over 50 sites across 12 provinces and territories
- launching the National Wastewater Drug Surveillance dashboard, making provincial- and territorial-level wastewater surveillance data publicly available
developing an online overdose monitoring platform to provide law enforcement and public health agencies with near real-time surveillance data to support rapid response to a sudden increase in overdose incidents and provide information on drug trafficking trends
deploying Federal Public Health Officers to a range of settings in provinces and territories to advance surveillance efforts, public reporting and data sharing
conducting surveillance activities and producing reports including:
- the CDSS data and evidence framework
- quarterly pan-Canadian updates on opioid- and stimulant-related harms in collaboration with provincial and territorial public health partners
- data blog on benzodiazepines in apparent drug toxicity deaths
- data blog on fentanyl analogues in apparent opioid toxicity deaths
- investigation reports on potential drivers of recent declines in opioid-related deaths
- the Supervised Consumption Sites (SCS) Dashboard
- Statistics Canada's Overdose Crisis Data Program (OCDP) that addresses evidence gaps and enables research into substance use, overdose and related harms leveraging multiple data sources and data integration opportunities
  - Evidence generated by the OCDP includes an analysis of socioeconomic characteristics associated with substance-related acute toxicity deaths in Canada
- examination of trends in police-reported drug crimes in Canada, using Statistics Canada’s Uniform Crime Reporting Survey
- data on illegal drugs and emerging psychoactive substances from the Drug Analysis Service and Cannabis Laboratory
- the 2024 at-a-glance report on new psychoactive substances in Canada
- the In Focus report on The Emergence of Opioids in Canada
- the New and Emerging Drug Threats report on fentanyl precursors
conducting public opinion research including:
- Canadians’ knowledge and attitudes around drug decriminalization
- Canadians’ knowledge and awareness of polysubstance use and associated harms
- controlled substances awareness, knowledge and behaviours for public education
the People with Lived and Living Experience Survey on substance use among street-involved youth in Canada
the 2023 Canadian Substance Use Survey on the use of alcohol and drugs in Canada by those aged 15 and over
the 2023 to 2024 Canadian Student Alcohol and Drugs Survey on substance use by students in grades 7 to 12 across Canada
the 2024 to 2025 Canadian Postsecondary Education Alcohol and Drug Use Survey on substance use among postsecondary students aged 17 to 25
the Online New Psychoactive Substances Survey
collaborating and exchanging knowledge:
- established the Chief Coroners, Chief Medical Examiners and Public Health Collaborative to improve the use of death investigation data to inform public health policy and prevention measures
- independent research and knowledge mobilization efforts through Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Matters including:
  - an evaluation of the short-term impacts and implementation of 11 federally-funded prescribed alternative pilot projects
  - an assessment on the public health impacts of supervised consumption sites across Canada

Substance use services and supports

Our investments help connect people to treatment, recovery and harm reduction services.

Treatment and recovery

Guidance for health care providers, including:
- clinical guidelines and operational guidance for injectable opioid agonist therapy (OAT)
- National opioid use disorder guideline
Access to treatment options by:
- issuing a class exemption for patients, practitioners and pharmacists prescribing and providing controlled substances in Canada to ensure continuity of care
- approving injectable hydromorphone and diacetylmorphine as treatment options for patients with severe opioid use disorder
Delivery of treatment services and supports in First Nations and Inuit communities, including:
- supporting 45 in-patient and out-patient treatment programs to increase reach and accessibility for those who may not otherwise seek treatment
- supporting OAT wraparound services at 83 sites working with more than 100 First Nations and Inuit communities
- the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation's Bundles of Interventions, Resources and Cultural Hub to provide access to culturally-based virtual mental wellness and addictions resources
- the Youth Substance Addiction Committee to train and assist youth and family treatment centres
Delivery of treatment services and supports in federal correctional facilities, including:
- National Drugs and Substances Strategy
- opioid use disorder guidance
- a national physician advisor for substance use services
- a national Substance Use Services committee to coordinate policy and service delivery for inmates with substance-use-related health needs
- psycho-social programs such as Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART)

Harm reduction

Support access to supervised consumption services, drug checking and overdose monitoring services, as appropriate, by:
- authorizing drug checking services to allow people to have their drugs tested, learn if their drugs contain dangerous substances, and support more informed decisions about their drug use
- authorizing supervised consumption services as a key point of connection for people who use drugs to reduce the risk of disease transmission and overdose death and access essential supports, including counselling, treatment and housing
  - from January 2017 to November 2025, SCS received over 5.6 million visits, responded to over 68,000 non-fatal overdoses, and made more than 641,000 referrals to health and social services
- authorizing provinces and territories to establish temporary urgent public health need sites where people can consume drugs under supervision to reduce risk of overdose death
Overdose prevention services at 5 federal correctional institutions
Access to and use of naloxone through:
- the development of a naloxone best practice guideline
- the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation, which distributes take-home nasal naloxone kits to federally funded treatment centres and First Nations and Inuit communities
- Indigenous Services Canada's Non-Insured Health Benefits
- correctional institutions that provide direct access to inmates and offer take-home kits to all individuals upon release
Access to sterile drug use equipment including a prison needle exchange program in 14 sites in 13 federal correctional institutions
Share laboratory analysis results on new and emerging drugs with over 400 law enforcement agencies and public health partners each month
Distribute laboratory drug notifications to law enforcement agencies and public health partners
Support community groups offering drug-checking services by providing confirmatory analyses to build and strengthen their analytical capacity

Substance controls

We're taking actions to disrupt the illegal drug supply and enhance public health and safety.

Through Canada's Border Plan and Budget 2025, we're fulfilling our commitment to strengthen border security and keep communities safe in order to detect and disrupt the illegal drug trade by enhancing border enforcement capacity.

Early progress includes:

strengthening cross-border cooperation and data-sharing with the U.S. through partnerships including the North American Joint Strike Force
listing 7 transnational criminal organizations linked to the production and distribution of fentanyl as terrorist entities
setting up Health Canada's Precursor Chemicals Risk Management Unit to enhance drug monitoring and surveillance and strengthen oversight of precursor chemicals that may be used to produce illegal synthetic drugs
making it illegal to import the essential chemicals that can be used to make fentanyl without a permit issued by Health Canada and allowing these chemicals to be seized at the border
deploying advanced technology and 1,000 new Canada Border Services Agency personnel to support detection efforts and secure the border
increasing federal policing capacity with 1,000 new Royal Canadian Mounted Police personnel to make communities safer

Other substance control actions:

Investigating and charging criminal actors suspected of producing or trafficking illegal substances by:
- working with private sector partners to prevent the use of legitimate chemicals towards illegal manufacturing of harmful substances
- investigating and dismantling clandestine drug labs capable of producing large quantities of synthetic drugs
- targeting organized crime groups involved in the illegal production and trafficking of synthetic drugs
Continuing to work closely with international partners in key forums like the G7, the Border 5, the Five Eyes intelligence partnership, and the North American Drug Dialogue to coordinate policy and operational responses to drug threats
Increasing cooperation with China to better combat the trafficking of synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals
Published draft regulations in the Canada Gazette, Part I to increase oversight of precursor chemicals and certain drug equipment
Worked with private and public sector partners to combat criminal networks' money laundering activities related to fentanyl and other synthetic opioid trafficking
Introduced legislative amendments to the Criminal Code in 2023 and 2024 to:
- establish an offence of laundering proceeds of crime for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization, with a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment
- facilitate investigation and prosecution for the offence of laundering proceeds of crime, and other economic crimes, by specialized, third-party money launderers
- facilitate the seizure or restraint of proceeds of crime, including digital assets
- expand the range of offences for which tax information held by the Canada Revenue Agency could be disclosed to law enforcement as part of a criminal investigation
Introduced Bill C-14, the Bail and Sentencing Reform Act, in 2025. The Bill would strengthen the criminal justice system’s response to organized crime at every stage, from bail to sentencing
- The Act would make bail more onerous for individuals who are charged with any organized crime-related offence, and would ensure that sentences more fully reflect the gravity of the harm caused, condemn participation in organized criminal enterprises, and deter others from contributing to the networks that sustain the drug crisis

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2026-06-15

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