Evidence of meeting #120 for Health in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was perrin.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:35 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
I know, but I have more questions and there are other witnesses. I can question a witness for 30 seconds since I still had some time left.
My apologies to Mr. Perrin. I was waving my hand, but it wasn't to interrupt you.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
5:35 p.m.
Prof. Benjamin Perrin
That was my answer.
Thank you.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you.
I hope I can have the minute back that I lost as well.
I wanted to state again for the record and go back to the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Carleton, who does say that government-funded safe supply programs are leading to more opioid deaths. However, I want to leave that for my last minute or so.
Mr. Perrin, I want to come back to you. If you were bringing back to the federal government recommendations from the committee, what would be the top three immediate actions that we could advocate for putting in place where perhaps we're not doing enough at the federal level?
5:35 p.m.
Prof. Benjamin Perrin
I think we need to mainstream what I would describe as safe places for people to use drugs. Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi said that his concern when he left the mayoral office was they only had one supervised consumption site. Where you have one, that's where you get a concentration of people. That's where you get concerns. These need to be more mainstream. That's the first thing. We should look at the mainstreaming of supervised consumption sites as a basic health response.
Second, we need to look at regulated substances, not just unique programs. We need to completely look at how we could replace this toxic supply. We should be looking at a number of alternatives that respond to concerns about things like diversion and look at different models that could work and be willing to do that.
The third thing is we need to have some national standards on what recovery and treatment mean. I mentioned five specific things: evidence-based, rapid access, publicly funded, regulated and, finally, trauma-informed and culturally appropriate.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
That's great.
Perhaps I can bring you back, then, to B.C. and the adjustment of the decriminalization approach. Again, I sense that there's a confounding of public disorder or public nuisance with decriminalization.
I wonder if you could comment briefly on the progress so far that you've seen with the approach from B.C. and what you would hope to see from now on.
5:35 p.m.
Prof. Benjamin Perrin
In terms of British Columbia, one of the things the province has done really well is creating a large number, more than anywhere in Canada, of safe places for people to use at the provincial level, and that's when we've had a supportive provincial government. When we don't have that, in provinces like Alberta and Ontario, then funding is the chokehold against supervised consumption sites, so even though they get approved, if they're not funded, they are not going to be effective. That is a huge issue in terms of the federal role.
In terms of B.C., I think it has been a real mistake to recriminalize possession. It is in fact not the public drug use that has been criminalized, as was announced; it's the possession. That means someone walking to a supervised consumption site is liable to be arrested now, and that was not the case prior to this rollback.
We need some really serious thought about what needs to be criminal and what can be administrative. We need to go back and revisit that.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Colleagues, we had some technical difficulties that resulted in Mr. Thériault losing a question. The witness has not been able to return, but in the interest of fairness, before we close the meeting, I think Mr. Thériault should have his question time back.
Monsieur Thériault, you have the floor for the last brief question and a brief answer.
5:40 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is very kind.
Dr. Somers, from my notes I can see that a lot of issues have been raised but I don't see any solutions. Could you give us three solutions, as Mr. Perrin did, that could help us overcome the toxic and lethal crisis of drugs and organized crime?
5:40 p.m.
Clinical Psychologist and Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I would make the premise about people rather than about drugs. If we focus on individuals, on human beings, then we have people who are greatly at risk, are socially isolated, are struggling mentally, are unemployed and, on average, are young people.
There are voluntary things that we can do immediately. One would be recovery-oriented housing—I'm not going to be able to break this down—which has been demonstrated around the world and in five regions of Canada through randomized trials to be highly effective.
5:40 p.m.
Bloc
5:40 p.m.
Clinical Psychologist and Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I am talking about people with addictions as well. The people we're losing are unemployed people who are disproportionately living rough and are socially isolated.
As I said earlier, more than half of the young people dying in B.C. were children in care. There is a profound link to social isolation and meaning in life, so there are voluntary interventions such as recovery-oriented housing. I'm not defining it.
For people who are encountering the criminal justice system, drug treatment courts and other specialized courts, when properly resourced, are extremely effective.
The third point I'll mention is prevention. We must do a far more effective job of preventing risk associated with substance use in the first place.
Those would be my top three priorities.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Mr. Thériault. I said one question, not a full turn.
Thank you to everyone for being here with us.
According to the schedule of the committee, this is the last meeting at which we will receive testimony. There seems to be a lot of interest in continuing that—
5:40 p.m.
Conservative
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
I'm sorry. You're right, Mrs. Goodridge.
Yes, we have at least one more session that we've agreed upon, and there seems to be interest in prolonging it further. You can see why, with the diversity of opinion and the energy that goes into teasing out the opinions of everyone.
Witnesses, we very much appreciate your being here, and thank you so much for logging in and for helping provide us with your perspectives to add to the study.
Is it the will of the committee to adjourn the meeting?
5:40 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
