Evidence of meeting #115 for Health in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
Ms. Lovegrove, I'll have to stop you there. You'll have lots of time to expand on this during the question-and-answer period. Thank you for your patience, and thank you to all of you for your understanding.
Ms. Larouche, you have six minutes.
11:40 a.m.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses who are here with us today. They are helping us to understand the scope of this crisis and the importance of working seriously by taking a science-based approach and not politicizing this file.
I would like to begin with a personal anecdote. As a teenager, I had the opportunity to spend time with the people from CACTUS Montréal. I can tell you that their stories likely contributed to developing my interest in community work, which I then pursued.
Mr. Pagé, I would like you to tell us a bit more about your organization. In response to my colleague's question, you said that there was no school near your organization. She also asked you a question about police services. We know full well that your approach must truly be considered from a continuum of services perspective.
In what type of physical environment is your organization located? What is in the surrounding area?
What is more, what connection do you have with the police?
11:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Dopamine
That is a complex question that I probably will not have enough time to answer.
Dopamine has two facilities in the neighbourhood. Earlier, there was mention of a park across from our organization. That is our primary facility in the Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve neighbourhood and it is our day centre. Dopamine has been in that house since 2013. Across from that facility, there is a park and affordable housing. There is an ongoing coexistence with the community. We want to ensure that no syringes are left lying around and that there is harmonious coexistence.
Dopamine's supervised injection service is located somewhere else, on Ontario Street. In Quebec, we have CLSCs, community health centres that provide health care services. Our organization has space at a CLSC that is open in the evening. There is a secondary school nearby. However, since Dopamine's activities at that location are held in the evening, there is no coexistence or friction. There is always honest communication between us, school stakeholders, people in the area and people in the community, whether about the Dopamine facility on Ontario Street or the facility on Sainte‑Catherine.
I will try to answer the other part of your question quickly.
As far as the relationship with the local police forces is concerned, Dopamine has always had a communication relationship that is at the very least administrative with the local police force. The goal is to ensure that the officers understand our mission and what we are trying to do in the community, and to prevent incidents.
Communication is key on many levels. As I said in my presentation, Dopamine has been integrated in the community for more than 30 years now. Its presence is welcome in the community. Dopamine existed and was involved in the community long before it started offering supervised consumption services. We have always maintained communication with the public and with officials, whether about health care, police services or security.
11:45 a.m.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you for providing some background on Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve. The members from Quebec can see that is much more complex and that this neighbourhood of Montreal has a very long history in this regard.
You also have plans to expand in order to add an inhalation site over the coming year. Are you able to do it? Can you talk to us about this project?
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Mr. Chair, on a point of order. Interpretation is not working online.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
Bloc
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
Colleagues, we're going to have to suspend for a few minutes.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
Colleagues, I think we have the issue resolved.
We do have a stop at one o'clock for this segment of the meeting, so please be mindful of that.
Ms. Larouche, you have two minutes.
11:45 a.m.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Pagé, I will repeat the question.
I know that you had an expansion plan to add an inhalation site over the coming year. Are you able to do it? Can you give us an update on the project and explain it to us?
11:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Dopamine
Yes, thank you very much.
As things currently stand, we need services and space to welcome people from the community both day and night. Our two facilities have complementary opening hours. For now, we do not provide injection and inhalation services during the day, but it is something we are trying to do. We have the green light from public health authorities, but we are still at the early stages of this initiative. First we need to assess the feasibility of the project in our building, from a technical standpoint.
That is why I was asking that the government facilitate projects like this, ones that will only improve the quality of life of communities, since people go indoors to consume, under supervision.
Finally, we are trying to complete this project to extend our hours of operation and provide services day and night. However, we have only just begun.
That being said, thank you for asking that question.
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
How would this improve the work that you do with people who use your services?
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Dopamine
Okay. I would say that it would help save lives, save lives and save lives.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
That was excellent, well done and under 10 seconds.
The final six-minute round goes to Mr. Julian.
You have the floor for six minutes.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to each of our witnesses.
Your testimony is indicative of how important it is for us to ensure that we are bringing down the death rates across the country. Every single death is important.
Ms. Lovegrove, as you alluded to in your presentation, every victim represents the end of a beating heart and a family and a community in mourning. We have to take action.
I want to start off by asking Ms. Oviedo-Joekes and Ms. Lovegrove the following questions: What should the federal government be doing more? Should it be declaring a national health emergency as we see numbers climb in Alberta and Saskatchewan? Should it be putting into place funding for safe consumption sites so that we can bring the death toll down, particularly on the Prairies where it is staggeringly high and increasing daily?
Ms. Oviedo-Joekes, you talked about dissenting with the truth. How much harm are people doing, are politicians doing, when they say things that are simply not true when it comes to dealing with this public health care emergency?
11:50 a.m.
Professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I will allow Sarah to speak first.
11:50 a.m.
Registered Nurse, As an Individual
It's my full, wholehearted belief that we need to be doing absolutely all of those things to curb this crisis. The federal government also has the opportunity to regulate the drug supply and offer a legal supply of drugs to the entire country to curb the deaths that are a result of the unregulated toxic supply.
We need to declare a national emergency. We need to institute overdose prevention sites in every single community across the country, invest in harm reduction and offer a regulated, safe supply to everyone in this country.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Ms. Lovegrove, on my second question, the issue of being truth-tellers, how much harm are those who are providing false testimony or false information doing?
11:50 a.m.
Registered Nurse, As an Individual
They're doing irreparable harm to this to the country, to the people who use drugs in this country. People are dying as a result of stigma; people aren't accessing services as a result of stigma.
When politicians utilize this as an opportunity to get election votes or get ahead in their careers, they are doing harm that is killing people. They need to be rooting their decisions and what they say in public with evidence and utilizing the expertise of people like the witnesses here today rather than listening to the opinions and prohibitionary stigma that is feeding the opinions of folks across this country and only further inflaming the stigmatizing belief system around substances.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you.
Ms. Oviedo-Joekes, I'll ask you the same question, both in terms of what we need to do and in terms of that dissent with the truth that you spoke about.
11:55 a.m.
Professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Following on what you're saying, we need to have all of the options open for people. If I was a person struggling with drugs, we don't know where I would be today or in 10 years. It's not a death sentence, but it has been demonstrated that treatments based on not using any substance—so-called “abstinence-based” treatments—have a success rate of only 5%.
Just holding the bandera—sorry for the Spanglish—of “that's what we have to do” is not good for people because there is no one treatment that we need to proclaim. We need to proclaim all of them because people are going to be in different places at different times.
We need to proclaim a young person maybe wanting to be on that path. Another person might be ready to start out with others. For another person, the only thing they might want is injectables. For another person, it has to be evidence-based.
If you lie and say that it is proven that this didn't work and you have authority and the floor and you just said that because you saw it in the news, you create panic and fear for the people who have children, for the people who don't read. You then get an entire community saying that this doesn't work. Abuse of power is not a good thing.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
I am deeply saddened by the Alberta death rate, which is now the highest in the country. The death rate in Lethbridge is 137.5 per 100,000. I'm deeply saddened by these statistics of a 17% rise in Alberta and a 23% rise in Saskatchewan.
When we talk about these tragedies happening now in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, what is your reaction?
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
I'm very sorry, but we are already over time, Mr. Julian. You'll have to hold that question and answer for your next round.
Thank you, colleagues.
In the next round, we'll be moving into different amounts of time, so I encourage the witnesses to listen carefully as to how much time the questioner has left to answer the question.
With that, Dr. Kitchen, you have the floor for five minutes.