The Yukon government has passed legislation that will allow it to participate in a class-action lawsuit against the makers and sellers of opioids. 

The lawsuit was launched by the B.C. government in 2018, and last year the B.C. Supreme Court certified the suit allowing the province to proceed as a representative plaintiff on behalf of other Canadian governments.

The lawsuit claims that opioid makers and sellers used deception to market their products and increase sales, resulting in increased rates of addiction and overdose. It seeks money from over 40 manufacturers and distributors in order to recover the costs of providing health care related to opioids. 

Opioids are drugs that are used to relieve pain. They include codeine, fentanyl, morphine, and oxycodone, among others. 

The Yukon’s Opioid Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act – which came into effect on April 7 – essentially allows the territory to be a part of the class action lawsuit without having to “undergo onerous documentary discovery products,” according to government spokesperson Tim Kucharuk. 

Under the new act, the Yukon government is not required to specifically identify people who have received health care, or to provide health care records as part of the lawsuit. It will instead be able to use statistical and population-based information as evidence. 

In an email to CBC News, the ministry of the attorney general in B.C. said a trial in the class-action lawsuit is set to begin in February 2028. 

Yukon Justice Minister Laura Lang told the legislative assembly that it’s too early to know how much financial compensation could result from the lawsuit. 

Kucharuk told the CBC News that the Canada-wide lawsuit is similar to one that was earlier launched against tobacco companies. That case saw the tobacco industry forced to pay the provinces and territories a total of $32.5 billion, with $101 million dedicated for the Yukon.  

Substance use emergency

Yukon’s chief coroner says her office has investigated 127 deaths in the territory since 2016 where opioids were a factor. 

In 2022, the territorial government declared a substance use emergency in the Yukon, and some Yukon First Nations have also declared their own local substance use emergencies.

At Eliza Van Bibber School in Pelly Crossing, Yukon, principal Sandy Rodrigues said some of the students have family members that struggle with addiction and have had to leave the community to seek support. She sees how it affects their ability to focus in class. 

“They [students] come to school with a heightened sense of unknowing, what’s going to be expected or what they’re going to find when they possibly go home,” she said. 

Rodrigues says the community is just in the process of getting a youth counselling service, something it has gone without for a long time. 

“If there’s money that can be accessed to support those kinds of services, that would go a long way to providing some healthy healing,” Rodrigues said. She said she thinks many community members – including students – are suffering from trauma. 

When people return to the community after treatment, she said, there are few supports available to them.

“Relapse is really easy to happen,” Rodrigues said. “There needs to be more direct supports within the community to ensure that the healing that is done outside the community continues within the community.”