Health Committee on May 30th, 2024

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I will take your word for it.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Well, thank you for that.

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

You're asking me for things that are not details that I'm aware of or that I know of.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

They are happening in your province, though, and you are the chief public health officer.

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I'm the provincial health officer.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

That company also received $3.5 million in funding.

Thank you for that.

That being said, are there other companies that you know of in Canada that have a dealer's licence to legally possess, produce, sell and distribute drugs such as opium, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine?

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

You would have to ask Health Canada that.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Are you not aware of any of those companies?

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

This is not an area of my expertise—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

I didn't ask you if you were an expert. I asked you if you were aware of any.

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I imagine there are. I don't know. Those are not areas that I focus on.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Then what you would tell Canadians is that you have no idea that these companies exist, even though many of them are located in your province.

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I would say with all of the companies that, as part of my role as provincial health officer, I don't meet with industry, whether it's industry related to drugs or industry related to vaccines or any other thing. Those are not areas where I have knowledge, detailed knowledge, of companies.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you.

Dr. Henry, you recommended a non-medical model for safe supply. Do you have any examples of that, which you would have recommended to Canadians?

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

We've been working on this, and I mentioned this—it's public knowledge—when I came out with my report in February. I think we need to look at all options around providing people with alternatives to what's toxic on the streets right now. I have a report we've been working on that will be coming out in the next few months on that.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Do you recommend compassion clubs like the one run by the Drug User Liberation Front?

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I don't recommend any specific model. I think we need to continue—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

You're okay with the Drug User Liberation Front, though. Would that be a model that you would perhaps support?

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I'm not supporting any specific models. I think we need to look at all of the options that are available that have the important regulations around them and support them.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Dr. Henry, to me it's very concerning that many individuals who were former officials of the British Columbia government, and indeed people who have occupied your position, are now involved with distributing, selling and dealing drugs such as meth, cocaine, heroin, etc., and profiting from it. Is that okay with you?

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I think what you have to do is separate between legal use, and that is under the purview of Health Canada—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

You're supporting these individuals. They did your job and you're actually saying that we should legalize more drugs in Canada. That's your pitch to Canadians. Oddly enough, these individuals are actually profiting from it. To me, that convinces me there's a significant conflict of interest here, Dr. Henry.

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

What I have always said and what I continue to say is that prohibition is one of the leading causes of the issues that we're in right now, and that legalizing and regulating is one way to manage the illegal and toxic drug crises that we're dealing with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Dr. Henry and Dr. Ellis, we're going to give Dr. Powlowski another try, now that he's at a stationary location.

Dr. Powlowski, the floor is yours, unless we can't hear you.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you, and hopefully you will.

Dr. Henry, I'll continue where I was before.

Certainly, I think the concern with Dilaudid is that it has become a kind of entry-level narcotic in Vancouver because it's cheap. My understanding in talking to people who work in the community is that the price of one Dilaudid tablet was $20 before safe supply. Now it's a dollar. As one psychiatrist said that he asks his kids who are on Dilaudid, “Why Dilaudid?”, and they say that, on the street, it's five bucks to buy a joint whereas they can get five Dilaudid for the same price, so which are you going to do?

Certainly, the concern is that you start off with Dilaudid and because, as you know, with narcotics, once you get used to it, you get tolerant, you have to go to something stronger to get the same kind of buzz, so they're switching over to fentanyl. Certainly, one psychiatrist who works with that population told me that of the kids he knows who are on [Technical difficulty—Editor], it's half on Dilaudid and half started originally on Dilaudid.

Certainly, there's the concern around safe supply. I don't know if you want to comment on that. I think that the Nguyen article in JAMA certainly suggested there was perhaps a societal harm that coincided with safe supply.

I don't know if you want to comment on that, but I want to go to the second part of the question, which is that there is good evidence for IOAT, intravenous opioid agonist treatment, the kind of Swiss model where people who are hard-core users are given heroin to use intravenously.