As executive director of BC Hepatitis Network, my involvement with the Coast’s response to the overdose crisis began in July 2019, as the Sunshine Coast Community Action Team (CAT) was completing its first year of operation. A call was issued by local CAT leaders for a new fiscal agent. With a new funding year approaching and as I had been living on the Coast for over a decade, BCHep offered to take on the role of fiscal agent, with the recognition that when a local organization came forward, the contract would transition to that organization.
BC Hepatitis Network provides community education and advocacy in relation to viral hepatitis. People who use drugs experience high rates of infection and from a health equity standpoint experiencing very barriered access to care and treatment.
CATs, initiated in 2018, are a partnership between the province and Community Action Initiative (CAI), and fund CATs in communities hardest hit by the overdose crisis. CATs are to help communities develop partnerships to provide focused, action-oriented strategies that will help to address the overdose crisis on a local level, according to the funder’s website.
This funding offers a unique opportunity for community leaders, allies and partners, together with those at the centre of and most impacted by this ongoing poisoned drug supply / overdose emergency –– people who use drugs, peers –– to collectively work out the strategies and actions that can truly shift this tragic, ongoing reality.
In November 2023, the CAI paused the Sunshine Coast CAT to put thought and planning into a new iteration of the organization. That pause resulted in the Sunshine Coast Resource Centre stepping up as the fiscal agent. Because the CAT is not a legal entity, it is not able to enter into a legal agreement. The fiscal agent does so on behalf of the CAT and provides administrative and fiscal services and oversight. That is the essential role of the fiscal agent. The fiscal agent may also sit as a community partner at the CAT table.
Whether the fiscal agent is or is not a partner at the CAT table, I am writing today to urge the CAT, as a very early step, to clearly define the role of the fiscal agent, within and beyond the administrative and fiscal duties and further, to clearly define the responsibilities and the limits of each of the roles: fiscal agent, the CAT as a whole, the CAT executive if there is one and the CAT project staff. Lastly, if I may, figure out how you will welcome, centre, and legitimize the experience and voice of the community most impacted by this ongoing overdose emergency. This is different from saying only the people most impacted have decision-making power. It is a deliberate commitment to remove the barriers to participating in processes and decisions at the community level, and to support people who traditionally are left out of processes and decision making about them. Community is where we can actually do this.
Most of all, this is hard work in trying times. Take care with each other.
