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“Clearly this crisis is moving in the wrong direction, and there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done by all actors in society.

But Philpott questioned whether a national emergency declaration, as requested by B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake and other West Coast politicians, would make a difference.

“There is no question this is an unprecedented crisis, and if the provincial government were to come to us and say, ‘We have literally reached the capacity of what can be done, and we believe that (the invocation of the Emergency Act) would allow us to do something that we can’t already do — if it’s deemed that that would be appropriate — of course we would do it.

Photo by Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS

“We will not stand in the way of anything that will help us address the roots of this crisis and to save lives.

She argued that Ottawa has acted on major requests from Victoria, with new regulations to ease access to opium substitution therapy drugs.

But she said B.C. hasn’t moved quickly enough to make those drugs available.

“We have actually enabled a number of mechanisms that the province has not had the opportunity to act on, and we would encourage them to do so.

Lake said Wednesday that there’s “great evidence to suggest that the federal government should declare a federal public health emergency.”

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who will be part of a delegation of big-city mayors meeting Trudeau here Friday, is also pushing for a stronger federal effort — though he stopped short of calling for use of the Emergencies Act.