Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Bear Clan Patrol Inc., and our board of directors, thank you for welcoming our voice into your house.
Bear Clan Patrol is a community-based, volunteer-driven safety patrol. Our mandate is to protect and empower the women, children, elderly and vulnerable members of our community. We do this non-violently, without judgment, and in harmony with the communities we serve.
This second coming of Bear Clan Patrol began in September 2014 in the wake of the death of Tina Fontaine, a young girl that was exploited and murdered while in the care of Manitoba's child welfare system. Our goal at the time was to interrupt the patterns of exploitation in our community to ensure that what happened to Tina would not happen to anyone else ever again.
Our role in the community has evolved, however, to include many new ways to support our community. Today's Bear Clan Patrol is active five and six nights a week doing 11 and 12 patrols per week respectively. We are active in three distinct inner-city communities in Winnipeg, and our footprint keeps growing.
Our model has been shared with communities locally, nationally and internationally. Our volunteer base has grown from 12 volunteers in 2014 to nearly 1,500 Winnipeg-based volunteers today.
So far this year, we have provided more than 30,000 hours of service to Winnipeg's inner city. We act as mentor, first responder, janitor and liaison between the community and service providers. We bring a sense of belonging and connectedness to our community members, and moreover, we provide an opportunity for our marginalized community members to step out of that role into the role of stakeholder. Amazing things can be accomplished by people with purpose, and we try to provide that purpose.
We have seen many positive outcomes as a result of our efforts, but in spite of our best efforts, we still feel the pain of loss. Even within our own ranks in the month of August of this year, we lost two of our own. Not strangers, not casual acquaintances, but two of our own Bear Clan family members were lost to addiction and overdose. Methamphetamine did play a role in both of those tragedies.
On the subject of meth abuse in Canada, I have travelled extensively in Manitoba, and to a few locations nationally. I have seen first-hand the increased rates of consumption, the increase in the level of destruction, and havoc wreaked in the lives of all of our community members. There is not one person I know that is untouched by this epidemic. The effects are being felt outside of the inner city these days, and without appropriate supports, it's only going to get worse.
In our travels through the streets of Winnipeg this year, we have recovered approximately 40,000 used syringes. We have seen a tenfold increase in the recovery of needles, year on year since our inception in 2015, from 18 syringes in 2015 to 40,000 in 2018.
We deal on a daily basis with community members in the throes of addiction, people experiencing meth psychosis, and an increase in violent crime and property crime. We're daily seeing more vulnerable people, and supports are just not keeping up.
There have been some new resources made available in Manitoba with the recent opening of rapid access addiction medicine, or RAAM, clinics. This started up at the end of August of this year. These clinics provide services to addicts on a walk-in basis, which is good, and we have referred many community members already. The only problem is that they operate two hours a day, five days a week. Given the scope and urgency surrounding the meth epidemic and the simultaneous opioid crisis that our communities are facing, those hours are terribly underwhelming.
Our patrols are conducted in the evening after most service providers are gone home for the day. When we come across people in crisis, there are very few options for us to offer. Typically, police or ambulance do a wellness check. Our main street project provides only the most basic services, essentially three hots and a cot. Even there, community members experiencing meth psychosis are not welcome because of the associated violence.
There are many things we need in our communities if we're going to make it through this epidemic. We need reliable access to resources in a timely fashion. Community development is not done nine to five, Monday to Friday. There needs to be a greater commitment. We need mental health supports to be more readily available. We need greater access to emergency shelters space. We need access to more affordable housing.
A community constantly existing in crisis mode is a community prone to all sorts of social abuses. I'm sure it's no surprise when I tell you that the biggest issue we keep coming up against is the blinding poverty that affects us and so many other communities around the nation. The poverty and disconnectedness in our community triggers addiction in our community members. That addiction feeds the random violence, feeds the rampant poverty, property crime, and it self-perpetuates: street, hospital, prison, repeat.
Safe consumption sites, needle exchange programs, 12-step programs, treatment opportunities, these are all good things, but if you're hungry or you woke up on a friend's couch that's another challenge. If you can't afford transportation to and from programming, job interviews, doctors' appointments, and even banks and shopping centres, these are beyond the reach of many of our community members.
If those underlying issues related to poverty are not addressed, there will be no meaningful progress. If poverty alleviation is not part of whatever strategy we employ, we are not going to get anywhere.
For the record, it is easier to get bongs and crack pipes in my community than it is to get good and healthy food, and by that I mean we have two chain stores in our community that sell produce and wholesome foods, but we have two dozen stores or more that sell bongs and pipes in our community. The store at the corner of my street even sells the Brillo piece by piece to feed that. This is a problem.
For our part, we have begun to collect and distribute produce and baked goods directly to community members. Last year we did 21 tonnes. This year we've done 55 tonnes so far, and I fully expect we'll deliver 60 tonnes by the end of the year. Last year we provided $35,000 in temporary work placements through our volunteer base. This year we did more like $90,000 in temporary work placements. We're very proud of these stats but, sadly, we're only scratching the surface. The need in our communities far outweighs our capacity to provide currently. It's time to change the way we value people. It's time for us to start working together in a much more meaningful and collaborative way. There needs to be a real shift in our thinking and it needs to happen now.