You have 10 seconds.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Health in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was treatment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Health in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was treatment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
11:55 a.m.
Harm Reduction and Recovery Expert, As an Individual
When you overdose, there multiple times...and you wouldn't have a beautiful family and the life you live today, three kids, a career. You know, it just speaks to their importance. Harm reduction kept me alive until I was able to find my recovery, so I'm really grateful.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
Thank you very much, Mr. Johns.
Now, for the benefit of witnesses, the amount of time in the rounds will change, so I just ask you to be mindful as I tell you how long they will be.
We will now turn back to the Conservatives.
Mr. Doherty, you have the floor for five minutes.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Goulão, it's nice to see you again.
Mr. Felicella, I want to say, as somebody who's from B.C., that I've followed your life and story in the media and also through some of the talks that you've done in schools and publicly as well. I greatly respect you and appreciate your point of view and appreciate your appearance on this panel today.
Minister Williams, you wrote an open letter to the federal government calling for a common-sense solution of traceability measures on so-called safe supply. You said your recommendation mostly fell on deaf ears. It went nowhere. It seems that this government is deliberately ignoring that diversion is in fact a problem and that it might possibly be actively enabling it.
Is that an accurate statement?
Noon
Minister of Mental Health and Addiction, Government of Alberta
Yes, that's an accurate statement.
Noon
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
You described the diversion of so-called safe supply as a human catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. Can you elaborate on this?
Noon
Minister of Mental Health and Addiction, Government of Alberta
Yes.
Fundamentally, the addiction crisis that we're in...and it is an addiction crisis. I need to point that out. Nobody walks down to the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver or Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, or wanders the streets in our beautiful city capital, as I have, and thinks that these individuals who are struggling and are intermittently homeless are not in active addiction.
Speedballing methamphetamine with fentanyl in this crisis situation is an addiction. We need to address that seriously, and if we're not adult enough to have that conversation, we're not going to find the right policies and solutions to it.
When it comes to safe supply, what that does is fundamentally increase the supply of opioids available to the public. If you look at the Stanford-Lancet commission from the world's pre-eminent scientific journal published with Stanford University, which is academically the authority on the North America opioid overdose crisis, the axiomatic rule that comes out of that report is effectively that if you increase supply, you increase harms. It does not matter if the producer of the supply is a drug dealer trafficking fentanyl from China or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau providing it through SUAP grants. The same biological fact of consuming the opioid will drive new addiction. You will have more supply. You will reduce costs. You will reduce barriers. You will increase access and, therefore, increase harm.
We saw this because the fundamental crisis we're facing was due to an opioid crisis that was proliferated in the 1990s with Purdue Pharmaceuticals and oxycodone, cynically propagated by them and by the industry that moved it forward.
We now see the Government of Canada repeating this again, and if they deny the diversion claims that Alberta believes are true, if they deny the diversion claims that the RCMP and Prince George and others have said are happening en masse with mass seizures of 10,000-plus pills, they can use evidence of a chemical tracker, which is approved as per guidelines with the FDA in the United States to protect intellectual property for for-profit pharmaceuticals.
Surely we can do that here in Canada. Surely if we have the ability to protect profits in the United States for pharmaceutical companies, why not protect lives and use the evidence that it is being diverted. Otherwise, I don't understand what they're afraid of beyond the moral and legal liability that they have for propagating it.
Noon
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Thank you, Minister Williams.
Dr. Goulão, Portugal is always used as a gold standard in terms of dealing with a nationwide addictions crisis. Was Portugal facing a fentanyl epidemic when they implemented decriminalization?
Noon
Conservative
Noon
Institute on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies
When we developed our policies, we were addressing a heroin epidemic. It was the biggest problem that we were facing at the time.
Noon
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Dr. Goulão, what resources and infrastructure were put into place prior to the Portuguese project.
Noon
Institute on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies
They were quite modest, sir. We are a country with limited resources, but we have been steadily stepping up the investment in the health service addressed to drug-related addiction problems. Nowadays, we have a mandate that encompasses not only the problems related to illicit substances but also to alcohol, for instance.
Noon
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I just have one last question. You've mentioned the serious lack of wraparound supports and how important those are.
Can you describe in detail the wraparound supports Portugal implemented?
Noon
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
Dr. Goulão, I'll have to interrupt you there. I'm sorry. Mr. Doherty's time is up, but perhaps we'll have time to come back to that question.
Ms. Sidhu, you have the floor for five minutes.
June 6th, 2024 / noon
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I want to thank all the witnesses for being with us and offer a special thanks to Mr. Felicella.
Mr. Felicella, thank you for giving back to the community. I'm posing my first questions to you.
Very soon you will be celebrating Father's Day. You have a beautiful family. What message do you have for the people who claim harm reduction has failed?
12:05 p.m.
Harm Reduction and Recovery Expert, As an Individual
Well, ma'am, it's pretty simple: My kids wouldn't be on the planet. They came after 2013.
The real big picture of it is that it's truly humbling. What I was struggling with was a lot of childhood trauma throughout my life and how I viewed myself as a person in society. Having the people in the supervised consumption site...it was overwhelming. They were always the ones constantly giving me options, talking to me about detox and talking to me about recovery. I really built a relationship with those nurses there. They cared. They cared more than I cared. That's why I kept coming back.
I was good at getting sober. I was just never good at staying sober. It took me a long time, but without the support of that supervised consumption site, I wouldn't be celebrating Father's Day. I wouldn't be celebrating anything I do. There are the impacts I've also had from the school talks and the wisdom that I can pass on to these kids so that they don't fall down the same path as mine and so that, if they are struggling, they do reach out.
It's been absolutely a very humbling experience, but I accept my past for what it was. I try to really have a balance of understanding. You know, there are a lot of people who just use drugs and don't have an addiction, and I don't want them to die. Having facilities that support all pathways and all people as individuals is vital.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you.
What can provincial and federal governments do to stop the flow of the toxic drug supply? When you're going to schools and you're talking to the kids, what resources need to be provided?
12:05 p.m.
Harm Reduction and Recovery Expert, As an Individual
First off, I think a lot of it has to deal with all the aspects of the four pillars, which are harm reduction, prevention, enforcement and treatment, and having those flow right right across the country. Obviously, with the toxic drug supply, it's really changed the dynamic of the things that we struggle with.
In our sense, the education piece is just vital for kids to understand how dangerous it is to use substances in today's day and age. It's not a question of.... Me telling somebody not to do something doesn't stop them from doing it. You also have to consider that when you're educating people. If you are using these substances, please don't use alone. Please get naloxone trained. Please reach out for support if you need it.
You just have to have the full continuum of care. We can't keep going back and forth. Just like we're not going to prescribe our way out of this, we're not going to treat our way out of this by sending people to treatment and recovery, because there's a back end to that as well. People need employment. People need purpose. I didn't need somebody to tell me how to live. I really needed people to show me how to live. That was the continuum of care with both harm reduction and recovery.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you.
My next question is for Dr. Goulão, quickly.
Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Goulão.
I'm a member of the interparliamentary group UNITE, founded in Portugal by your former colleague, MP Ricardo Baptista Leite.
Could you talk to this committee about the debate you had in Portugal in Parliament and in society?
12:05 p.m.
Institute on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies
The debate around decriminalization, is this what you mean?
12:05 p.m.
Institute on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies
It was held in or around 2000. It was a proposal of the committee that drew up the first national strategy. That included decriminalization and, in fact, it was quite easy to have the social support of the population around this idea. At the time, it was almost impossible to find a Portuguese family that had no problems related to drugs. It was crosscutting all groups of society. Of course, it affected mostly the most disorganized marginalized groups, but it affected the medium class, the upper classes, the political class—everyone. It was—
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis
I'm sorry, Dr. Goulão. I'll have to interrupt you there, sir. Thank you for that.
We now go to Mr. Thériault for two and a half minutes.
