Health Committee on Feb. 19th, 2019

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you very much.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll direct my question to Mr. Barnum and his last comment about not taking away his tools for investigation.

The decriminalization of products such as methamphetamine would require a lot of your tools to be taken away. For example, you wouldn't be able to take away someone's small amount of methamphetamine, because it would likely be legal if it were governed by the same type of legislation as for marijuana. If it is decriminalized, your tools would be taken away. Would you not think that would be the case?

[D/Commr Rick Barnum]

When we talk about the wraparound services, I think it's important to make sure that it's done thoroughly and with full understanding. If we can't seize a small amount of methamphetamine—a half a gram or less that somebody has in a syringe or whatever—that's probably not going to make or break a case for us. We still need access to understand if a bunch of people are overdosing in a community on a specific street. We need the analysis much quicker. That's a huge tool for us, so we can inform the community and to be able to find out what's in common there. If everybody gets a chance to walk away from this and whatever happened on the street, we can't find out how it got there in the first place. That's what I mean when I say give us that co-operation tool.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Right. Okay.

The behaviour of these meth addicts is certainly a lot different from that of fentanyl addicts. They are erratic and often have unpredictable behaviour, of course. How would you deal with them as a police force? If you have a meth addict on the streets. You don't know how that individual is going to react to your presence, for example. They are also a danger to society.

How would you deal with them differently than, let's say, a fentanyl user?

[D/Commr Rick Barnum]

I think it's important to recognize that we have to deal with each case individually based on how the person is presenting themselves. There is no strategic or specific way to deal with every individual case. They have to be taken on their own merits.

It's also important to recognize that the challenge we have with methamphetamine users, more than anything, is what to do with them. Often we'll take these individuals to the emergency room and they'll be turned away because some may be acting violently or lashing out and there's no way for the hospital to deal with them. They're still in our custody, so we have to take them back to the detachment and lodge them in cells, which is not where we want these individuals. Often they harm themselves or try to harm others and the situation gets worse.

What to do with somebody on meth who reacts violently, or unpredictably or lashes out is the challenge we have. That's a real dilemma for us in policing. Obviously we can't leave them on the street where they're going to harm themselves or others, so we pick them up and then we have to try to get them help.

That's the type of thing I'm talking about when I talk about wraparound services before legalization or decriminalization. We can't put it all on the hospitals. We can't leave it all to the police. We need that full wraparound service, so we would be able to take somebody who's really struggling and violently lashing out to proper help. We can deal with the legal part afterwards.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Fulford, you mentioned in your opening statement that there needs to be greater intelligence and collaboration between you and the RCMP. How is it right now? Is it poor? Obviously you think there should be more enhanced collaboration. Is anything going on now?

[S/Sgt Lee Fulford]

There's a lot of collaboration occurring. There's always room for improvement. With the amount of precursors coming into Canada, and the amount of domestic production we're seeing, there's always room for improvement for us to work with our municipal and federal partners to do a better job at proactively investigating and dismantling these clandestine labs.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Ms. Turner, you mentioned that one of the reasons people use meth is to stay awake— otherwise they'd freeze to death. As a fellow Albertan, before my political days, I served on the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, and there was always a facility in Edmonton or Calgary for homeless people to go to on cold days when they had the potential of freezing to death.

Is that not the case now?

[Karen Turner]

A lot of the community those places serve tend to bar some of our community when they act out, when they're intoxicated or on some other substance. Sometimes they have nowhere to go. We have very limited resources for shelters in Edmonton, considering the amount of homelessness we have. Yes, there are people who have to sleep on the street, who have to walk around all night. The meth will help them stay a little bit warm and help them to walk around and stay awake so that they don't freeze to death.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Apparently, there are a couple of ways you can use meth. You can smoke it or you can inject it. Sarah Blyth appeared before the committee the last time, and she told us there should be safe smoking sites available for meth users, because it improves their healthy outcomes since injecting the drug is apparently worse for you. Is that the case, Ms. Turner?

[Karen Turner]

Sorry, what was that?

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Injecting meth or smoking meth, which is better?

[Karen Turner]

I don't think you can...

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Neither is good, of course.

[Karen Turner]

With the drug itself you're ingesting, it doesn't matter which way you're doing it.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Exactly. There are people out there who—

[Karen Turner]

A lot of the meth in Edmonton is contaminated with fentanyl. They're getting both. We are losing people who just use stimulants, or think they're just doing stimulants, when it's in fact contaminated with fentanyl.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

We have a number of people advocating for community safe-smoking sites similar to the safe-injection sites we have throughout the country. I know in my community we have a safe-injection site where there are a lot of problems with break-ins and crime going on. Certainly these problems have increased significantly because of this injection site. Now we're thinking of bringing in safe-smoking sites for methamphetamine users, whose behaviour tends to be even more erratic and unpredictable. There is a big concern in the communities about this.

What are your thoughts on safe sites?

[Karen Turner]

It's all about wraparound services. I work in a place that has a safe consumption site and it's like a one-stop shop. It has housing. It has the wraparound services that our community needs. It's all about relationship-building. We don't have a problem in Edmonton at our safe-injection sites like maybe other cities do. I know there are some safe-injection sites in other places where the workers are being treated very poorly by the community. I mean community surroundings, not the people who use drugs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thanks very much.

We're moving on to Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Turner, I'm going to start with you.

As my colleague mentioned, Sarah Blyth, the executive director of the Overdose Prevention Society in Vancouver, emphasized the need for people who use stimulant drugs such as methamphetamine—in fact, all drugs—to have access to a safe supply of these drugs. This is because of the harms associated with the drugs when they're obtained on the black market, which is where I presume all of the drugs are being obtained now.

She explained that methamphetamine is often contaminated with other substances, including laundry detergent and pig dewormer, as well as fentanyl, which you mentioned. In your testimony, you said that a methamphetamine user has no way of knowing on the street what they're getting. They don't know the dose or that Canada's drug supply is contaminated.

What can you tell this committee about the contaminated supply and what you suggest as a way of dealing with this problem?

[Karen Turner]

I think the best way to deal with the contaminated street supply is to offer a safe drug supply, such as by Dexedrine and Adderall prescriptions. I've asked some of the community who use meth whether, if there were a “prescription meth”, they would switch over to a similar prescription, and they said they would, absolutely. Some people need it to be able to focus and concentrate.

There are some good outcomes that could come from some people using it. There is also a lot of problematic use; I see that too. If we give a safe supply, we don't have to worry about all the garbage that's going into people and hurting their health outcomes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. MacPherson and Mr. Culbert, both of you have made mention of advocating a policy of decriminalizing simple possession of small amounts so that we're not treating people with substance abuse disorders as criminals but rather are treating them as patients.

Where would you suggest they get their supply from? If it's no longer illegal to have it and to use it in small amounts in personal possession, where would you foresee them obtaining the drugs they would be in possession of?

I'll start with you, Mr. MacPherson.

[Donald MacPherson]

That's a conundrum, when we talk about decriminalization. People generally have to get the supply from the illegal market, and right now in Canada, the illegal market is a contaminated market.

I'm not suggesting that we should not decriminalize. Decriminalization is really saying as a society that we're all going to work together as institutional partners—health and enforcement and police—and treat this as a health issue and that someone is not going to end up in the criminal justice system just for possessing small amounts of these substances for their own personal use. It's a huge signal to people.

It still leaves us with the problem of the source of the drugs. That's why, as Karen Turner has been suggesting, we have to look at that side of the equation too. There needs to be a safe supply of substances for people who we know are going to use them.

It's really an ethical choice for us: to allow people to continue to use the contaminated, illegal, deadly market, or to offer them substances that are very common substances in our medicine cabinets and our pharmacies today—some of the stimulants that Ms. Turner was talking about.

There are, then, two different issues, and I think there are ethical questions around both.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Culbert.