Thank you.
I want to thank you all for inviting me to speak today, for giving me the opportunity to share my lived experience with the methadone treatment and safe supply programs.
I'm going to touch very lightly on one issue.
My daughter, Larisa, died in September 2020 from methadone toxicity, 12 days into her methadone treatment. I wanted to bring this to the forefront because there are other ways of dying. This was at the hands of a doctor at Recovery Care here in Ottawa who did not conduct an opiate tolerance test on her prior to starting her on the methadone program. Unfortunately, 12 days into her program, she overdosed because of the dose the doctor gave her two days prior.
I think it's important to know that methadone is a great tool to get a person on the path to recovery, but we also have to look at how it's dispensed and prescribed, and whether the doctors prescribing this know what they're doing and are not skipping any steps.
What I really want to talk about today and focus on is the protracted and lived negative experience with my son, who is in active addiction. He's been under Dr. Charles Breau's care at the Byward Market Recovery Care location on Rideau Street since June 2021, and on safe supply under Dr. Breau's care since the fall of 2022. He's prescribed 28 hydromorphone pills daily, in addition to his current dose of 45 milligrams of methadone. He was on methadone last year, as high as 165 milligrams. He's still using street drugs. Three years later, my son is still using fentanyl, crack cocaine, and methadone, despite being with Dr. Breau and with Recovery Care for over three years.
As soon as he was put on safe supply, he started diverting his safe supply. Most of the patients I see coming out of this clinic on Rideau Street—I see them in front of me—coming out of Dr. Breau's office, coming out of the pharmacy right in front of where I'm parked. I've taken pictures. They're counting out these white pills. Dealers come out of nowhere, and they hand them a little thing wrapped in plastic. I see them move a couple of feet, and they're smoking and injecting right on the street. This is my experience with safe supply, my experience with my son.
I have gone in to see Dr. Breau myself, as has his father, over the last two and a half years, asking for a treatment plan, asking for counselling, letting the doctor know that he's using fentanyl, that he's using crack cocaine and we're worried about overdosing.
The doctor really didn't respond to anything. His answer to me was, my son is the one who has to ask for the treatment plan, not me. For the last couple of years I have essentially been monitoring my son. I moved in with him. In fact, three or four weeks ago, I had to call 911 because he overdosed. This is all under the care of Dr. Breau and Recovery Care clinics. We're into three-plus years. Why am I still calling first responders when these clinics, as is my understanding, under SUAP are receiving millions of dollars in funding, $10-million plus to date? Their websites purport to have a treatment plan, individualized for each patient, mental health counselling for each patient. They have one mental health counsellor, to my knowledge, across four clinics, who is only available virtually more often than not.
As someone with lived experience and who has observed what is going on outside of the Recovery Care clinic on Rideau Street for the last three years, for the diversion I'm witnessing, not just with my son but with the people outside the clinic, this is not working. I feel that safe supply has its place and can be helpful, but the dosage has to be witnessed. You can't give addicts 28 pills and say, here you go. They sell for $3 a pop on the streets. You've got drug dealers.... I know this for a fact, through my son. I've seen it. They come to your home 24-7. You can call at 2:00 in the morning. They take your hydromorphone pills. They supply the crack.
Fentanyl is now down to $60 a gram. It used to be $120 or $170. Addicts are like my son, who still wants to get clean through the type of care that he's receiving at Recovery Care specifically, because that's my lived experience.
Dr. Breau, in my opinion, knows what's going on, because I told him that I suspect my son is diverting. I want to know why he's getting so many pills. Where's the treatment plan? Where's the mental health counselling? I need to save his life. Three years in, I should not be calling 911; they're already overextended.
In closing, what I want to say is that I see no evidence of all this SUAP funding—which is taxpayers' dollars, yours and mine—being spent on treatment and recovery at Recovery Care for their patients. I believe that we have to move away from what is a harmful drug legislation model to a hopeful recovery-focused model, where you've got detox treatment, mental health treatment, assistance in acquiring housing and employment skills. I believe that safe supply can work only if it's witnessed and dispensed and there's a treatment plan attached to it.
As I said, I've been trying to keep my son alive for the last three years. He's been in the safe supply program. I have spent hours, weeks and months—his father and I—as we've been looking for a treatment program. We've been looking for something that's based on recovery. At this point, what we see is that all roads point to the Alberta model.
Thank you.