Health Committee on Dec. 10th, 2024

[Angela Welz]

Decriminalization is a big issue for us. My daughter was okay until she was arrested for liquor theft, and after that, it created a lot of problems for her. She had to appear in court. She had different things she had to do to resolve her court situation. Criminalizing people is not the answer. We need to step away from that, particularly with youth, and offer them more support, more harm reduction options, more compassionate treatment options and voluntary care. We also need more housing, of course, because there are kids who need housing as well.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

I was talking about harm reduction and decriminalization.

[Angela Welz]

Oh, I didn't understand. Do you mean having more harm reduction available for kids?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

What compassionate help or education can we give to the kids? What kind of help can we provide to youth so they cannot go where your daughter went?

[Angela Welz]

I think there has to be open communication. There have to be harm reduction conversations, rather than vilifying harm reduction as a bad thing. Harm reduction doesn't make people use more drugs; it just makes them educated about how to protect themselves.

Another big thing for youth would probably be drug checking.

Have open, educational conversations with parents so they understand that kids will use drugs. There's no way we're going to stop that from happening, so we need to have an educated approach for both parents and youth in order to understand how to best protect them if they're going to use substances of any kind.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Dr. Caudarella, your focus is on decreasing stigma.

Can you speak about how Canada can more effectively integrate substance use, health services and mental health services, and collaborate across sectors, if you're talking about a provincial harm reduction program?

[Dr. Alexander Caudarella]

I think there's a lot that can be done around collaboration across those sectors, absolutely. We recently released standards—and thank you, Health Canada, for funding that—on what every prescriber needs to be able to do. It's time to say, “It doesn't matter whether you're a pediatrician, a psychiatrist or this and that. You need to be able to do stuff around substance use health.” I think it's about getting rid of this problem across sectors that “It's not my business”. This affects parks and recreation departments as much as it affects law enforcement and different things.

CCSA used to have a program that we're looking at reinitiating, one that really pushes for law enforcement and health partnerships. It has to be a two-way street. There's a tremendous amount we can learn about drug trends from law enforcement that can help us on the public health side. There's a tremendous amount the public health side can do to support law enforcement so they can be more effective.

It's also about setting targets and accountability. I'll tell you an example. I used to work in an emergency department. If you want to see ambulance wait times go down, make that one of the reportable metrics that go up to the province, and tie funding to it. All of a sudden, if funding is tied, everyone is willing to work together.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

You also talked about ideas and innovation. CCSA recently hosted a summit in Timmins.

Can you talk about what kinds of innovative ideas there are?

[Dr. Alexander Caudarella]

Yes.

Again, mayors are getting calls because family members can't find supports, or because someone's afraid there might be a needle in a park or something. Working with people where the rubber hits the road has been tremendously effective. Most people actually know what their community needs. They know this when it comes to outcomes, but they don't always know how to get there. A municipal team isn't going to have all of the expertise and policy necessary.

They need a menu of options. We had mayors from Iqaluit, Cambridge, Ontario and Lethbridge, Alberta. They similarly needed a menu of options that could help and evidence-based tools that can change outcomes, but they wanted to be in that driver's seat and say, “Okay, this one will work for me in my setting, and this one won't.” At that local level, getting law enforcement, harm reduction and different people to work together is actually not too hard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Caudarella.

Mr. Moore, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses today.

Dr. German, you made a number of comments today that I want to hone in on.

One, you used the example of those who go through airports, which members of Parliament are all too familiar with. We have checks and scans. We all get checked. I have to think that organized crime in Canada is laughing to see all of us go through those checks when they look at the porousness of our ports and the fact that the vast majority of shipping containers are not being checked at all when they leave the port in Montreal, or any other port in Canada.

Can you comment a bit more on what needs to happen at our ports and the current state of affairs? You mentioned port police. There used to be dedicated enforcement at the ports. This has long since not been the case. What else would be helpful when it comes to our ports and the security of our country?

[Dr. Peter German]

I do believe that Canada is considered a soft target by organized crime. That's why I mentioned that it's a high-value target but that it's low risk to organized crime. That's only going to increase unless we deal with it.

In terms of the ports, I think I'm probably restating what I said earlier, but I do believe that there has to be a uniformed police component there. You wouldn't want to say goodbye to your municipal police department and not have anyone that you could call. We expect that there will be police that will be doing the routine patrolling.

You also need that federal component. The RCMP is our federal police. Remember, the CBSA is a law enforcement agency. It is not a police agency. It does not conduct investigations outside of the ports with regard to drugs and so forth.

The third issue is the clearances. We have to know who's working in our ports. It's as simple as that.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

You mentioned in your answer something else I want to hone in on. You mentioned that Canada is a high-value, low-risk environment. I agree 100% with you that it's the case. There's one aspect of that on which I'd like to get your comment. In our country, it used to be that if you were convicted of production of, importing or exporting of schedule I substances—including fentanyl, meth, cocaine and heroin—it would result in mandatory jail time.

The current government's Bill C-5 eliminated that mandatory jail time and, in effect, allowed house arrest for those convicted of moving and producing large quantities of very serious drugs, some of which are wreaking havoc on our streets today, as you mentioned. How do laws like Bill C-5 and like Bill C-75, which created a revolving door in our justice system, imposing on judges the requirement that they release those who are seeking bail and making it very difficult to take someone off the streets who's been arrested for some of these very serious offences...? When you couple those two bills alone, how do they play into Canada's being a high-value, low-risk environment for organized crime?

[Dr. Peter German]

There are a few things, and I'll be quick here.

Minimum sentences are not something that our courts like, for one thing, so it is important that we have a punishment option. Imposing minimum sentences or requiring minimum sentences has not held up very well in our courts with the charter.

In terms of catch and release, I 100% agree. I think that that's what upsets the public so much: to see people with dozens and dozens of convictions being released. They need other services—I get it. They need treatment. They need a whole lot of services, but what the public does not need is them right back on the streets breaking more windows, creating havoc, walking around with knives, etc. It's very important, I think.

When it comes to the importers, yes, there are people importing drugs. They tend to be low-echelon players. They are the couriers. They are the dupes. They are people who are doing something for a few thousand dollars. Yes, there has to be some sort of a sanction, but it's really getting to the top of organized crime that's important. Bringing down the kingpins is what you want to do.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Dr. German.

The frustration you mentioned with law enforcement in some of the more complex cases—money laundering, extortion and now these serious, organized-crime drug offences.... You mentioned that when we have, in a sense, lawlessness, we risk even losing ourselves as a state because organized crime just takes over. Are we on that path as a country when you see police officers throwing up their hands and saying how even if they do arrest someone, the person's right back out on the street?

I see that I'm out of time, Mr. Chair, but....

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Give a brief answer if you could, please, Dr. German.

[Dr. Peter German]

In some ways, I see myself and others like me as canaries in the coal mine. We have to be alive to these issues. We have a very strong country. We're not about to go down the route of state capture, but we should be aware of it.

The other thing I would point out is the broken windows theory. If you don't deal with little things, they become bigger.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

That's right.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

We'll go to Dr. Powlowski, please, for five minutes.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Rikhardsson, I'd like you to talk a little bit more about Planet Youth and explain how it works. I understand that this is a very upstream intervention, getting kids involved in healthy activities.

I've spoken previously to some of the groups you're working with in Canada on implementing your program. When I asked about my kids, they said to get them in healthy activities. Well, how do I get my kids off the computer and their computer games to do something healthier? The explanation was that you create an environment whereby your kids will just naturally be wanting to be involved in healthier activities.

You've said that there is this 10-step process. First of all, you have to prepare. Then you get the data and you talk to the kids. Then you implement certain action strategies. I guess the strategies are aimed at schools, peer groups and families. Can you give us some concrete examples of what kinds of community interventions or what kinds of school and family interventions you have used that seem to have been productive?

Let me just add a comment before you start. I've worked as a doctor in numerous places around the world. Having kids with nothing to do, especially young males with nothing to do, inevitably leads to bad outcomes.

Maybe you could talk about what kinds of interventions you use.

[Dr. Pall Rikhardsson]

There are different examples of this, obviously, from our partners. As I said, we don't export interventions, but we work with our partners to develop them. Within these different domains....

I have a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old at home. Getting them out of their room and off the computer is no easy task. It's not they who have to make the decision. It's the environment around them. It's about engaging with parents, as we heard before, and teaching young parents how to be good parents.

We have examples from our partners about building social capital within the schools amongst parents, using interventions like parental cafés, friendship groups and things of that nature so that the parents work together as a cohesive whole within the class. We have that within the leisure time domain. We don't need expensive solutions and to build multi-million dollar parks. It's more about having organized, structured leisure time activities on offer, and not just sports. Some kids hate sports. That's okay.

We just need to have access created to those environments and those offerings and then encourage the kids, from the parental side and from the school side, to participate in them. Even playing computer games, if that is done in a structured, organized environment, can have a preventive effect. You can compete in video games these days with more prize money than some of the tennis camps I go to.

It's the combination of these things. The actual interventions have to be culturally appropriate and adaptable. Again, they range from the community-based, as I was telling you about, to the parents and it's up to what some of our partners do. In Mexico they have national campaigns for parents to spend time with their kids. That has a preventive effect as well.

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

In Canada, certainly in my riding, there is a large indigenous population. Within that population there are high rates of poverty and often high rates of substance abuse. Are you working with groups in indigenous communities in Canada? If not in Canada, I know you work in other countries, so maybe you can talk about what other interventions globally have been effective. You talked about Mexico.

I'd just like to get more concretely into what kinds of interventions we're talking about here.

[Dr. Pall Rikhardsson]

Yes. We're working in Calgary. The project in Calgary has an indigenous parallel where the model is being adapted even further to the indigenous and first nations realities. We are working with tribes in Washington state that are doing the same. There are different aspects in that context that we have to adapt to regarding data collection and data sharing. Even the reporting needs to be different.

As for the interventions, we have a database of something like 100 interventions that are being practised by our partners around the world. They can be really different. In Australia, for example, they found out that sports was actually a risk factor. The more the kids played rugby, the more they were drinking. Three things led to that. One was the access to alcohol in the clubhouses. The sale of beer was a really important factor. Then there was the permissiveness of the parents. They'd bring a six-pack to the game with them and 13-year-old Johnny would have a beer with his dad. There were the coaches as well. The coaches were not really trained to work with that age group. They were sometimes drinking a beer and smoking on the sidelines, setting a bad example for the kids.

Based on that data, the community in question implemented “train the trainer”. They sent all the coaches to training sessions on how to be good role models. They educated the parents about the harmful effects of alcohol on the developing brain. They cracked down on underage sales in the clubhouse. The interventions were focused on the community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Rikhardsson.

To the folks online, we have alarms ringing here, so we're going to suspend the meeting until we find out what the alarm is all about.

We'll be back to you as soon as we know more.

[The meeting was adjourned at 13:32 p.m. See Minutes of Proceedings]