By Corinne Boyer – Montreal City News – January 25, 2026
A new remote service has launched in Quebec to help prevent drug overdoses, offering callers access to counselors by phone or video in a province grappling with rising overdose deaths.
Quebec’s overdose crisis has reached alarming levels. A report from the province’s institute for public health shows there were 645 drug overdose deaths in 2024 alone, with projections for 2025 expected to exceed 600.
Drugs: Help and Referral recently introduced the Remote Service for Overdose Prevention (RSOP) to provide immediate support for those at risk.
“In Canada, we’ve seen a decrease of overdoses, in Quebec, we’ve seen the opposite!” said David Galipeau, assistant coordinator at RSOP.
RSOP counselors follow a structured approach, explaining rules to callers, obtaining consent to contact emergency services if necessary, assessing overdose risk, providing wellness checks when there’s no immediate danger, and deleting personal information once the call ends to maintain anonymity.
“Here is really a support,” said Galipeau. “So the person could just use substances completely in silence and will just be there and monitor and see if the person is still well and then punctually just check up on the person. We stay on the phone throughout the entire time. But sometimes, the person just wants to talk about what they’re feeling. Sometimes, it can bring out some emotions and stuff like that. Then we can intervene and we can support those types of cases. But the person can choose the level of which, the support that they get from our team.”
Counselors emphasize that the service is not about stopping drug use but preventing fatal overdoses.
“We’re not there to tell them what to do, we’re not there to stop them from using the drug, we’re not asking them to stop, we’re just asking them to do it with someone, to not do it alone,” said Karelle Chevrier, addiction counselor at RSOP.
Officials note that most overdose-related deaths in Quebec occur when people use drugs alone at home, which significantly increases the risk of a fatal outcome.
“Drug usage in general is very stigmatized in society, and some people, due to that stigmatization and self-stigmatization as well, experience loneliness,” said Galipeau. “It leads them to use substances alone in their house or elsewhere in the city in secluded areas.”
“The danger when we do it alone is so high and we just don’t want people to die basically so just call us to do it with us and we won’t judge you,” added Chevrier. “We’ll be there for you and we’re not going to tell you what to do.”
After the pilot project launched in June 2025 proved successful, RSOP has grown to nearly 30 employees handling 120 to 160 calls a day, with recent spikes reaching 200 daily calls.
“Frequency is slowly going up but it’s more the number of different people that is becoming bigger faster and also we did lose some of our callers because they ended up going to our other program so they used with us and then they stopped using and now they moved on to the regular line where they can talk about how they want to keep sober and they want to stay sober and they want to go to therapy,” said Chevrier.
The service is free, confidential, bilingual, and available seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. Callers can connect with an RSOP counselor by contacting Drugs: Help and Referral at 1-800-265-2626 and choosing option 2.
Source: https://montreal.citynews.ca/2026/01/25/quebec-launches-remote-service-drug-overdoses/