Health Committee on Nov. 18th, 2013

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I see.

The National Advisory Council on Prescription Drug Misuse has stated that:

There has also been a surge of criminal activity for diverting prescription drugs from legal, regulated supply routes to illegal markets [...]

You talked a lot about awareness raising in the last little while. You said that increasingly, we must step up prevention.

I would like to know what diversion techniques currently allow people to acquire prescription drugs by accessing legal supply routes.

[Insp Jean Cormier]

It is difficult to answer that question. Drugs are diverted using different methods. It is what we call “diversion” in English. Legal drugs become illegal.

According to the process that is in place, when we learn that this is going on, basically, we carry out an investigation. That said, most of our programs are based on education and prevention.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Can you talk to us about how this works between the federal and provincial governments? How do they make prevention work and make sure that this really reaches young people? Before I became an MP, I was a teacher. I never heard about these prevention tools for young people in Quebec. As you pointed out, the danger is that people think because a drug is on the market, sold in drugstores, that it presents no danger.

I would like you to talk to us about what is being done between the federal and provincial governments; how do you work together, and what partnerships have you formed to warn young people about the dangers involved?

[Cpl Luc Chicoine]

With regard to prevention, I have been a member of several groups whose purpose was to inform and help other first responders, that is to say police officers, firemen and paramedics, so as to increase their awareness regarding certain substances. The misuse of prescription drugs is a relatively recent phenomenon. It has become a much bigger issue over the past two or three years. This danger has now become much more prevalent. This led us to take action. I say “we”, but I am referring to police officers in general, from one end of the country to the other. This includes the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec, as well as Ontario police forces.

The investigator's courses and those on prevention are all given at the Canadian Police College and the Ontario Police College. I am an instructor at both these colleges, and prescription drugs are one of the important topics I discuss.

At higher levels, it is up to the department to undertake prevention activities in schools. I can tell you that the RCMP does this in schools and with the general public. We try to improve people's knowledge of this issue.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Fine.

Currently, if there were—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

You're over your time. Thank you.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Next up is Ms. Adams.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thanks very much.

Again, congratulations to our new chair.

Thank you very much for coming today and for your continued incredible service to our nation.

My colleague, MP Wilks, touched on a specific question: what drugs are actually being abused the most? There wasn't a concrete response to that. Do you have an appreciation, perhaps, of which prescription drugs children and youth seem to be abusing the most?

[Paul Saint-Denis]

I know that one of the drugs that has risen to the top as being extremely popular—and I can't tell you if it's specifically with very young children, teenagers, or young adults—is OxyContin. In the last several years, that has arisen as a drug of serious concern.

As of a couple of weeks ago, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police met and discussed these drugs as an issue. One of the drugs mentioned as a sort of an up-and-coming drug of concern was fentanyl. Fentanyl is an opioid that is extremely powerful. The chiefs expressed some serious concern about this particular drug, although it's not nearly as prevalent as OxyContin.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

As you can imagine it's a very serious issue for parents. What types of symptoms should they be on the lookout for? If your child happened to be abusing these types of prescription drugs, and these two are the most prevalent, what would be some of the warning signs you could look out for?

[Insp Jean Cormier]

If I may, I'm going to ask Corporal Chicoine to answer.

[Cpl Luc Chicoine]

To answer your first question a little more, it is difficult for us in law enforcement, or anybody sitting at this table here, to determine exactly which drug is the most abused because the drug that we know is the one we see, but the one being abused is the one we don't see. It's the one in all our medicine cabinets. It's that drug that is being removed, one or two tablets at a time, by the teenager or the youth or even the young adults, that is being abused. That is the one we don't see.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

That's very true. What I'm trying to get at here is a better understanding of the scope of the problem, and who is maintaining metrics on this. I think all around this table we understand this is a serious issue, but as we look to move ahead and deal with this issue, trying to have a firmer grasp on just how widespread this is, knowing which specific types of drugs are being abused would be helpful. Providing some concrete, practical information and advice to parents going forward would be helpful. Perhaps there is something you could share from your experience. But if the answer is we just don't know, perhaps you could direct me to where we might be able to find this type of information.

[Cpl Luc Chicoine]

Yes. As I was saying, the drug of abuse is going to be the one that we have in our cabinets so it could go from oxy that we have discussed, which has been seized in larger amounts, to fentanyl, which we've been seeing a lot, but there are others...bio-diazepam. A million other drugs are going to be abused, that are known through the Internet, that are known in a mixture of two tablets. One tablet of each kind can give a certain effect on the body. Obviously, the effect on the body is going to be different on each person as well, so it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly what the symptomatology is going to be without knowing which drug is being used.

[Don Head]

Perhaps I could add to what Corporal Chicoine is saying. Given that we have a captive audience and we're able to monitor it a little more closely, one of the things we see is that if you shut down one source, people who have an untreated substance abuse problem will look for some other form of drug, alcohol, intoxicant, inhalant to deal with their problem. I think part of what the corporal is saying is that although you may focus on one, and it may be the one that is prevalent today, it may not be tomorrow because you cut off that source, and people are going to find the next available drug.

[Jennifer Goldstone]

I can add to this. I believe last week our Health Canada colleagues talked about our concerns around abuse of pain relievers, sedatives, and stimulants, and how they do some tracking through the CADUMS, the Canadian Alcohol and Other Drug Use Monitoring Survey.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

That was perfect timing.

Next up is Ms. Sims. Go ahead.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

First, let me say how delightful it is to be coming to a committee meeting on a Monday afternoon, especially the health committee.

I have a number of questions, and one of them follows up on one my colleague asked about the RCMP's collection and publishing of an annual report that used to occur, called the drug situation reports. The last report was published in 2009, as you said. As we all know, data is very important when we're tracking how we're doing in the system, because you can't just go by gut and people's different impressions. Yet this data—that used to be collected by the RCMP, that would have led to informed policy, informed decision-making around the kind of prevention we want to have, but would also give us a realistic view of what was happening out there in this area—doesn't happen anymore. I want to know why. Was it the RCMP who said we don't want to do this anymore, we don't need it as a tool? I'm looking at why such a valuable service was stopped.

[Insp Jean Cormier]

I'm not sure. Maybe one of my colleagues can answer why the report is not being produced anymore because some of the statistics would still be available. It's the publishing of the report, I believe, that is...when it comes to the statistics part of the report.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Is there anybody who can answer why that report would not be published, so that people like us can actually take a look at it when we're making decisions?

[Insp Jean Cormier]

If nobody else can answer it's certainly something I can check into and get back to the committee.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I would really appreciate that.

As a teacher and a long-term counsellor in both elementary and high school, one of the things I realize is that the drug situation is a serious situation. I don't think there is any disagreement on either side, or all three sides, or whichever way we want to look at it. But I think we also know that there are no simple solutions. We need a multi-pronged approach.

I want to pick up on a question that was asked by my colleague across the way, about prevention programs available for young people. I was very impressed with the answers you gave around all the training and everything that happens for the service provider end. But I also know that we could take up all our resources and not have anything left to spend on anything else unless we look at the causes and start addressing some of those and start with...education is the best antidote or the best medicine in this case.

Being a teacher from B.C., I've seen a lot of those resources disappear over the last number of years. When I left the education system—and that was a few years ago—by that time a lot of the prevention programs had already gone, not because people didn't want to do them, but because of funding. I have a lot of concern around that. I know you're here for the enforcement end, but I think it would be very naive to look at only the enforcement end without the context of what we're doing to address the whole area.

I have another comment I really want to make, and then I have a question. I come from the city of Surrey. I'm a member of Parliament for Newton—North Delta. Newton is the Surrey part. Today it almost devastated me when I read the news that we've had our 22nd murder of the year. When I read the report in the paper the comment was that the majority of the homicides, murders, have been drug or gang related. So I have a huge interest in this because I live in a community that simply rocks and is devastated every time another murder takes place, and we've broken a record this year. Most cities want to win records, but this is not the kind of record you want to have.

I suppose my question leading from that—and I have met with the police in my area—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ms. Sims, could you ask a quick question because you're using up your time.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay, I am so sorry.

What kind of coordination happens between you and other authorities to look at finding solutions or developing a strategy that is multi-pronged and isn't only dealing with it at this end? What do we do about the other end?