Health Committee on Oct. 4th, 2016

[Dr. Supriya Sharma]

In terms of naloxone, there are two forms. There's the injectable form and now there's the nasal spray form. We did take steps to make both forms available without a prescription, which significantly aided access. Naloxone was already being used in such areas as supervised injection sites, by first responders, and in emergency departments. That was already available. Now there are various strategies under way to be able to increase the access. Many provinces have undertaken to provide naloxone free of charge. They will put naloxone either in the injectable form or now in the nasal spray form in specific kits, with instructions on how to use it.

I think the steps that have already been taken have increased access already. I think we will see increased access to both forms as well as we move forward.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Len Webber]

That's great to hear. Thank you.

I'll pass it on now to Mr. Ron McKinnon, for five minutes.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I'll go in a little bit of a different direction here. Historically our approach to drugs and drug addiction has been to control substances that we consider highly addictive, and dangerous in that sense. However, in recent years, research done by people like Dr. Bruce Alexander in Vancouver and Dr. Gabor Maté suggests that people get addicted not because of the substances but because they lack human connections. If you address the human connections in their lives, you improve their quality of life and they're no longer as susceptible to addiction.

This question is for the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and probably also to the health department. Are you aware of these studies, and do you have an opinion on them? If so, would you share that with me?

[Rita Notarandrea]

Certainly when we look at prevention, we look at risk and protective factors. For instance, we're looking at resiliency. When you look at the risk factors, some of the risk factors are genetic. Some of the risk factors are the environment. When you look at protective factors, it speaks to connectivity in the school. It speaks to connectivity and parental nurturance at home.

There is a listing that, yes, we do consider when we look at prevention practices. It looks at both the risk factors and the protective factors.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Are you familiar with Dr. Alexander's work?

[Rita Notarandrea]

I'm familiar with Gabor, the second individual you mentioned.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Okay.

How about the health department?

[Hilary Geller]

To be honest, I don't think I have much to add to what Rita just said. Certainly we are aware of the literature around the root causes of substance abuse disorders. We keep on top of that. I think some of that thinking perhaps is behind the fact that different countries take different approaches on their drug policies.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Yes. It seems to me that if we're wrong about what causes addiction, then we would likely go off in different directions, wrong directions perhaps, in how to treat it and how to prevent it. If we are, in fact, focusing wrongly on the substances when we should be focusing more on the people, that would affect our ability to educate people on the problem, to treat people, and to prevent the occurrence.

Can either organization offer any more insight into this?

[Rita Notarandrea]

To repeat what I said earlier, I think it's both. I think we need to look at the prevention opportunities that are there. We also need to look at current practices, whether those practices be in education and prescribing or whether those practices be in the delivery of treatment services.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Okay. Those are my questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Len Webber]

All right.

Go ahead, Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

I just want to let the committee know that I have given the clerk notice of the following motion with regard to a discussion on Thursday:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee call upon the Minister of Health to move as quickly as possible to conduct a review of the laws and regulations in place with regard to safe injection sites. This review should have as an end goal to improve the health and safety of Canadians, using a strong, evidence-based approach.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Len Webber]

Thank you for that, Ms. Sidhu. It will be distributed to the entire committee for our next meeting.

Let's move on now to Dr. Carrie or Ms. Harder for five minutes.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

We'll split our time.

Maybe you can see that the Liberals are really trying to focus on this one thing, safe injection sites, as far as the spectrum of treatment is concerned. That's what I wanted to ask a question on, because Ms. Geller was quite correct when she said there's no evidence of increased crime rates at these safe injection sites.

I'd like to ask the RCMP if you could get back to us with statistics. I don't think you'll have them. My understanding is that where Insite is in Vancouver, it's actually been suggested to the police that they don't charge. In other words, if they're not charging for all the crimes that they see, the crime rates will not go up.

I actually had the opportunity to go down there unannounced, and it is amazing how many ongoing crimes you're seeing, but they just don't charge people.

I was wondering if you could get some of those statistics back to us, because they say one of the reasons for putting these safe injection sites into communities is it won't increase the crime rate. But we do know that addicts usually are not people of means. My understanding is that to get their hit for the day, they have to commit between four and eight crimes. If this is petty crime, prostitution, break and enter, or whatever they need to do, wherever you locate that safe injection site, within the area around it, it will cause an increase in crime, and the police officers we had a chance to talk to down there said there were all kinds of petty crime down there.

I think it's really important when you're looking at Bill C-2, that you see that public safety in the communities, the neighbourhoods, with the moms and dads, the kids in the area is balanced with just the desire to put these through.

Is that information you could get back to us with?

[A/Commr Todd G. Shean]

The specific one we're discussing now is located in the Vancouver city police jurisdiction, which is not an RCMP jurisdiction, so we'd have to actually go to another police force's jurisdiction and ask them if they have the statistics on that. It's not something we would keep. It would be within the City of Vancouver's data banks.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'd like to find it out just to confirm that, because that's a really important point to bring forward.

Madam Geller, we understand that a major source of fentanyl is from China. Can you confirm that fentanyl was not brought up during the recent visit of the Prime Minister to China? Do you have any knowledge of that?

[Hilary Geller]

I'm afraid I have no knowledge of that.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Would you be able to find out for us and get back to us?

[Hilary Geller]

I could certainly make an inquiry. How successful I will be, I don't know.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

It never hurts to ask. Thank you very much.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I have a really quick point of clarification. I think it was you, Ms. Geller, who stated that 2% to 4% of young people misuse or abuse. Is that correct? Were you the one who gave that statistic?

[Hilary Geller]

Yes. I could pull up the statistics. This comes from the student drug survey, which is now just recently released.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Is there any chance of our getting that report sent to the committee?

[Hilary Geller]

Absolutely. It's actually posted online, but yes, we can send the report.