Public Safety Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, I will call to order the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. This is meeting number 36, and we're continuing our study on Bill C-2 today.

We have two hours of witness testimony today. For the first hour, we have with us Dean Wilson, prior plaintiff. By video conference from Vancouver we have from the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, David Berner, executive director, and from the Vancouver Police Department, Inspector Scott Thompson, district 1 commander, operations division.

Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee, I welcome you.

Colleagues, the second hour of testimony and questioning today will be cut a little short due to the bells. I'll give you notice now so that you can be prepared for that.

We will now proceed with the first hour of business today.

Gentlemen, I will call you to the table here and inform you that you have up to 10 minutes for an opening statement. Since time is rather tight, the chair will keep you to that. If you can make it a little bit shorter, that would be much appreciated.

Mr. Dean Wilson, you have the floor, sir.

[Dean Wilson, Prior Plaintiff, As an Individual]

Thank you. I'm a little nervous. The last time I was dressed like this in front of people like you, the last thing I heard was “guilty as charged”.

I appreciate the chance to give testimony regarding Bill C-2, but I'm also confused. I thought the Supreme Court of Canada's decision of September 30, 2011, finalized the issue of supervised injection sites. The court decided that supervised injection sites were legal and constitutional. I guess the present government feels it can sidestep the highest court's decision, and because the legal route has now closed, it will regulate supervised injection sites out of business.

One only has to read the three judgements, those of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the appellate court of British Columbia, and the Supreme Court of Canada, to feel the spirit in which the courts framed the supervised injection site issue within the laws of Canada. What those judgements specify is that supervised injection sites are a medical issue and should be treated as such.

I know the decisions do not sit well with the Conservative government, and it wishes to shut down supervised injection sites, stating it supports the treatment of drug addicts over harm reduction initiatives. This is incredibly misleading, as the government does not support treatment either. The Auditor General's report of 2002 showed 95¢ of every dollar the government spends on the illicit drug issue goes to enforcement, leaving only 5¢ for everything else, including treatment. This does not sound like support to me. In fact, it makes me feel the federal government doesn't care about the most downtrodden of its citizens.

I realize drug addicts seem to be the new pariahs and the only outcome is jail or the cemetery, but I believe from personal experience that everyone counts.

I'm a 58-year-old man who presently has five years of sobriety. Before that, I was a street-entrenched polydrug addict using heroin and cocaine, which very few people supported even though I was a noted advocate for the rationalization around the drug issue, which was documented in the Genie Award-winning documentary Fix: The Story of an Addicted City.

I know the following seems counterintuitive, but it was the building of relationships with the medical staff at Insite that allowed me to take the first step, that being detox. I relapsed the first few times, but through perseverance by the staff at Insite and myself, I now live a straight life. It proves that anyone can change.

This change is what everyone in the downtown eastside really wants. This is not a party drug consumption place where people smoke a couple of joints on a Friday night. These streets are filled with people who have experienced incredible trauma in their lives and are just trying to cope.

I recall the story of a 19-year-old girl I met at Insite. She said it was her birthday. I said happy birthday to her, but she indicated that birthdays were incredibly sad to her. I asked why. She bluntly stated that on her 10th birthday, her father passed her around sexually to her three uncles. I was left speechless. How does anyone cope or recover from something so horrible? This is just one of many stories in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. I do not care what anyone says: that girl deserves whatever treatment is needed, including supervised injection.

Sometimes I wonder if those opposed to our centre actually know the full extent of the work we do there. I think we do a disservice in Canada and Europe by the names we call our sites. “Drug consumption rooms” in Europe and “supervised injection sites” in Canada are very descriptive phrases, but only describe a very small part of the services we offer.

In Canada at Insite our model is similar to the “drogenhaus” treatment centres in Germany. These are multiple-floor treatment centres where the higher up you go, the more involved is your treatment.

On the first floor at Insite we have the supervised injection room, but also a chill room where we can observe people both before and after injection, a health room where nurses on site can triage, and also two staff members who circulate among the users and try to hook them up with whatever services might be needed.

I have seen these staff members get housing for people, get them to health care, and in one case go so far as to get a person a bus ticket home, which we know had a very good outcome.

On the second floor is the detoxification centre. It is ironic that for a government that only believes in treatment, it took Insite, the supervised injection site, to open the first new detox in Vancouver in decades that I'm aware of.

It is the third floor that is critical. It is the transitional housing unit. Let me explain.

Most people can detox from a drug they are using in 7 to 10 days, but most long-term treatment centres require 30 days clean before they will admit someone. This left us with a 20-day gap, where the person leaving detox typically had to go back to the same environment that caused them to seek detox in the first place. The transitional housing unit therefore allows the person to stay in a treatment environment until they can get into long-term treatment centres. Bridging this three-week gap has been the most important service that I have seen, second only to the critical initial intervention that is the supervised injection. The results of all this have been documented in many scientific journals.

As for the science behind supervised injection sites, I can quote ad nauseam the scientific and medical published papers in support of Insite. In fact, there are over 60 published papers in support of Insite and I have yet to see one that does not support the work being done there.

In Bill C-2, Canadian Police Association president Tom Stamatakis is quoted as saying that in his experience, supervised injection sites “lead to an increase in criminal behaviour”. This is not backed up by science. Papers in both Canada and Europe suggest the exact opposite. Again, it seems counterintuitive, but again I believe the relationships between the drug users and the staff at Insite have a lot to do with this. While purely anecdotal, I have seen a great resurgence in those who visit Insite. It's like they have realized that somebody actually cares about them, and therefore, they want to care about themselves. This is certainly the first step to reclaiming their lives.

I think the government should be assisting, not putting up roadblocks, when helping communities with problems surrounding the drug issue. Supervised injection sites are not the only answer, but they certainly have a part to play with the street-entrenched drug user. Supervised injection sites hold out the first line of treatment and we should be doing everything possible to replicate the successes of Insite.

We do not support putting up supervised injection sites if all the supports are not in place. We also strongly believe that this is a medical issue and has to be treated as such. While enforcement is part of every discussion on the drug issue, it should not be weighed more heavily than any other part. We should also use this discussion to talk about more traditional treatment protocols. More detox centres are needed, as well as transitional housing units and long-term treatment centres.

This brings me to another dilemma. Why is the government tossing aside the law and the science regarding this issue? Is it based purely on the moral aspect of this issue? If this is, they are again wrong. There have been over two million injections at Insite, with 4,000 medically intervened overdoses, yet not one life has been lost. This goes in the face of Bill C-2's assertion that only one life per year is saved.

This brings me to the fact that I surely hold the higher moral ground. I choose to help the most disenfranchised in our communities. The only comparison I can think of is the lepers of biblical times. Their communities also shunned them. But as now, so was it then, and there are some who have chosen to help. I will close with this: If Jesus were alive today, he certainly, most certainly, would support supervised injections sites.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wilson. I appreciate your comments.

Now we will go to Mr. Berner, please.

[David Berner, Executive Director, Drug Prevention Network of Canada]

Honourable members, the Drug Prevention Network of Canada is pleased to support Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, known as the respect for communities act.

So-called safe injection sites, which are hubs for illegal and anti-social behaviours, will not be welcomed by neighbourhoods if these operations are simply thrust upon them. Asking the promoters of this failed and woollen-headed experiment to answer some serious questions before building their empire at the expense of local integrities is the very least we can do as a democracy. We applaud the current administration for this initiative.

Let's look at pieces of the bill and at the real evidence, not the questionable studies presented by the very people who built Insite.

A report by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS on harm reduction programs and Insite released last summer, for example, is not science; it's public relations. Authors Julio Montaner, Thomas Kerr, and Evan Wood have produced nearly two dozen papers on the use of Insite. They have been awarded more than $18 million of taxpayer money in recent years. Predictably, they boast of good results in connecting addicts to treatment, but convincing evidence is not only lacking, it's non-existing.

The current campaign reports significant reductions in drug overdoses, yet the Government of British Columbia selected vital statistics and health status indicators show that the number of deaths from drug overdose in Vancouver's downtown eastside has increased every year, with one exception, since the site opened in 2003.

In addition, the federal government's own advisory committee on drug injection sites report only 5% of drug addicts use the injection site and 3% were referred for treatment. I believe that's terribly high. There is no indication the crime rate has decreased as well as no indication of decrease in AIDS and hepatitis C since the injection site was opened.

Claims of success for Insite made in The Lancet, the famous British medical journal, in 2011 were challenged vigorously in a 15-page heavily documented response and by addiction specialists from Australia, the U.S., and Canada and by a former Vancouver Police Department officer who worked the downtown eastside for years.

In “A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities” for the Institute on Global Drug Policy, Dr. Garth Davies who is a Simon Fraser University associate professor wrote:

However, the methodological and analytic approaches used in these studies have not been scrutinized to any significant degree. Previous studies are compromised by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of baseline data, insufficient conceptual and operational clarity, inadequate evaluation criteria, absent statistical controls, dearth of longitudinal designs, and inattention to intrasite variation. [...[ In truth, none of the impacts attributed to SIFs can be unambiguously verified.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is exactly what happened. The three good doctors were originally working on HIV/AIDS, and they did something curious because it had an unintended consequence. They resolved the problem of HIV/AIDS in a wonderful way, and their work is magnificent, but they put themselves out of work, so they turned their attention to addictions using the same template to get money and to support what they believe and so on. It's the old journalistic story of follow the money.

I had dinner a few months ago with somebody who used to work at Insite, and he said that he had to quit because he thought the place was evil. I said we agreed on that but why did he think it was evil? He told me it was because he had seen the so-called researchers counting one addict five times. He'd seen this several times. He has also seen so-called researchers interviewing an addict moments after the addict has just shot up. Now I ask you all when you leave this committee meeting, please go to the local hospital and go in a room where somebody is in a coma and try to interview them and see what that's like, because that's what you will get when you talk to someone who has just shot up.

Dr. Colin Mangham, who is on the board of directors of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, has been a researcher in this field since 1979. He said:

The proposal for Insite was written by the same people who are evaluating it – a clear conflict of interest. Any serious evaluation must be independent. All external critiques or reviews [of the Insite evaluations], there are four of them — found profound overstatements and evidence of interpretation bias. All of the evidence — on public disorder, overdose deaths, entry into treatment, containment of serum borne viruses, and so on — is weak or [entirely] non-existent and certainly does not support the claims of success. There is every appearance of the setting of an agenda before Insite ever started, then a pursuit of that agenda, bending or overstating results wherever necessary.

Let's look at the bill itself. Under proposed new subsection 56.1(3), the minister “may consider an application...after the following priorities have been established”, and I will just refer to two of them: “(a) scientific evidence demonstrating...medical benefit...”. Well, we submit to you that there is no such legitimate clear, clean, and independent evidence. Quite the contrary, nothing has changed. The very idea that giving addicts a place to shoot up will help them in any manner shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of the issue of addiction.

Let me make this very simple and very clear. What do addicts want? Addicts want more. The don't want more tickets to ball games. They don't want more children. They don't want more bicycles. They don't want more violin lessons. They want more drugs. That's what they want, so an addicted man or woman may inject under a nurse’s supervision, but two hours later, that same addict is back in the alley doing what he or she knows how to do. Why? The addict's life is not about a quarter of a gram of inert white powder; it is about a culture and a way of living.

Going back to the criteria, “The Minister may consider an application...”, proposed new paragraph 56.1(b)(iii) says “provides information about access to drug treatment” centres. Oh, that this were so. I happen to know every treatment centre in British Columbia and most in Canada because of the work I do, and in spite of Mr. Wilson's passionate testimony, let me give you my passionate testimony. I have yet to hear of one addict—one—being referred to a treatment centre. I haven't met him. I haven't heard of her. I don't know their names because it doesn't happen. I know all the people who run treatment centres and they will all tell you that they've never had an addict being referred from Insite.

You see, Insite is not about recovery. The good doctors who built it actually don’t believe in recovery. They think that abstinence is a fantasy. The provincial health authorities don’t support abstinence-based recovery, and these are the very people who whisper in the ear of the provincial health minister. All of these people want to give addicts free needles, free crack pipe kits, free heroin, methadone, lessons on wine making for alcoholics, and comfy places to shoot up. Insite, you have to understand, is the tip of the iceberg. It is the flagship for a very dark philosophy that says, “You, my boy, are hopeless, so we're going to keep you pacified and pray that you will not break into our condos and cars”. You can see how this arrogant and misguided approach is working, how elegantly it fails to enhance the lives of either addicts or communities.

The sad truth, ladies and gentlemen, is this. In my province, the poor get methadone and the rich get private treatment clinics. I happen to work at one of those rich private treatment clinics.

On proposed new paragraph 56.1(3)(i), item (iii), “the presence of inappropriately discarded drug-related litter”, I have a friend who owns a building in the downtown eastside. She's trying to run a business there, and she has been fighting with the City of Vancouver for two years asking if it would please remove those damned blue boxes from the back alley, and the City said, no, that's where the addicts are going to throw their needles.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but I don't know of any addicts who are up for good housekeeping awards, so my friend who owns this building and is trying to conduct a regular business down there regularly has needles all over the place and human body waste. You ask communities if they are ready for that and if they are prepared to host that kind of lunacy, and ask the good doctors who promoted this madness to establish one of their projects next to their homes.

Finally, I want to make a comment about two opponents' responses in the House. The Honourable Judy Sgro, a Liberal from York West, said when this was being debated in the House, “The only success I have seen so far, which is limited, is the safe injection site in Vancouver.” Well, the good member is right. Her views are extremely limited. All she has to do is go to any city in Canada, and there are hundreds and hundreds of wonderful prevention or treatment programs operating—not as many as we could have, but there are many of them, so if that's the only thing she has seen, that's the only thing she has seen.

The Honourable Libby Davies, the NDP member for Vancouver East—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Berner, I'm sorry, but your time is up, sir. You're over your opening time. In your comments, and perhaps in discussion with Ms. Davies, you can make your point, but we will now go to our third witness.

Mr. Thompson, you have up to 10 minutes.

[Insp Scott Thompson, District 1 Commander, Operations Division, Vancouver City Police Department]

Good afternoon, honourable members, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today on behalf of Chief Constable Jim Chu of the Vancouver Police Department.

As for my background, I'm in my 34th year of combined policing service as a current member of the Vancouver Police Department and as a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 2003, I was part of the Vancouver Coastal Health project team for the supervised injection site, or SIS. In 2003 I was also the author of the Vancouver Police Department's policing and operational plan for the SIS. I also developed and delivered the SIS orientation packages to both VPD members as well as Vancouver Coastal Health staff. I was down on the ground in the downtown eastside for the first year of the supervised injection site's operation.

Currently I'm in charge of Vancouver's northwest police district, which encompasses the downtown core, west end, and includes our city's entertainment district, and also the Dr. Peter Centre.

For the VPD, the story of the SIS began early in 2002. Philip Owen was the mayor and chair of the Vancouver police force at the time. The VPD examined the question of an SIS during a facilitated managerial and executive process and came to two conclusions. One was that our expertise is in policing public safety, not in health and medical research. Therefore, we should always be cautious when and if we choose to support or criticize public health initiatives and/or research, given our expertise lies elsewhere. The other was that regardless of whether we agree with the concept of an SIS or not, we need to be at the table.

As you likely know, in late 2002, a civic election in Vancouver resulted in Larry Campbell, now Senator Campbell, becoming mayor. The primary election issue was the SIS. Mayor Campbell and others subsequently drove the process to make this concept a reality.

As part of the application process for an exemption for medical research at the SIS under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Health Canada asked the VPD what its position was. We replied that for drug users not engaged in disorderly, unlawful, threatening, and/or violent behaviours on the street, or wanted for an outstanding arrest warrant, it is unlikely that it would prevent or impede the Vancouver police from accessing the supervised injection site.

Just before the SIS opened, the VPD operations plan stated the following to Vancouver police officers. Police have a broad range of discretion when dealing with drug use and drug possession in the city of Vancouver. This discretion includes options such as seizure of the drug, and/or arrest and charging of the person. This discretion lies solely with the police officer on the street. Also, when dealing with intravenous drug users found using drugs within a four-block radius of the SIS, it is recommended that our members direct the drug user to attend the SIS to avoid future contact with police.

Our orientation package for the SIS staff, and later for our VPD drug policy, stated simply that on a fundamental level all health initiatives must be lawful.

I submit that during the past 11 years, members of the Vancouver Police Department have performed their duties in an exemplary manner in relation to the supervised injection site. This performance represents the best traditions of a neutral, apolitical, and professional police service in a free and democratic society.

This brings me to the vision of the Vancouver Police Department and the key messages I've been asked to deliver to you today.

First, the VPD agrees with the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police that illicit drugs are harmful. The high instance of addiction in Vancouver contributes to an inordinately high property crime rate. When the supervised injection site opened, the VPD position was that we were in favour of any legal measure that might have a chance of reducing the drug problem in Vancouver's downtown eastside. We are on the record as initially supporting the SIS as a research project, and have continued to have a good and effective working relationship with the staff of this facility over the years.

The VPD's primary interest and mandate around the SIS has always been and remains public safety, not public health. Our position is that as a police agency focused on public safety, it would be inappropriate for the VPD to comment on the medical merits of the SIS.

What we will say based on our decade of experience is that local civic government and community support, as well as the support of the police, are crucial when any new health service is implemented, be it an injection service, a medical clinic, medical health treatment centre, or supportive housing. Our experience after working with public health, medical and addiction services, and in more recent years mental health services, is that the police and health services should work toward building effective partnerships that can contribute to and improve the delivery of health services, as well as public safety.

As to whether we can comment that crime has increased or decreased related specifically to the SIS, we cannot say either way. The SIS is located in a neighbourhood with high violent crime caused by many factors, none of which are specifically related to the SIS. Property crime in the neighbourhood is also driven by drug addiction, and it cannot be specifically related to the SIS.

Upon request, we have provided information regarding our historic SIS operational policing plans to the police services of other cities. We are conscious, however, that every city, town, and community will have its own circumstances and stories and that the situation in Vancouver may well be quite different.

In closing, the Vancouver Police Department will not be an active participant in any debate about the medical merits of a supervised injection site, particularly in relation to other cities and jurisdictions in Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson, and our other guests.

We will now go to our rounds of questioning. We will start off with seven minutes.

Mr. Falk, you have the floor.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I want to start off by thanking our witnesses for their presentations this afternoon.

Mr. Wilson, I'd like to ask you a few questions.

What is your connection with Insite? Are you an employee there?

[Dean Wilson]

No. I was one of the plaintiffs in all three court cases. I was just an addict who was part of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which is a political sort of...trying to better our lives. Getting more treatment, actually, is one of the big things we try to do.

The City of Vancouver sent me to Frankfurt, Germany to take a look at the six there. I came back. I thought it was a good idea, as long as the other supports were in place.

I used Insite, contrary to Mr. Berner's testimony, and I was.... Many people have gone out to the Maple Ridge Treatment Centre from Insite. I have five years of sobriety, and it's because of that.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I want to commend you on your five years of sobriety.

[Dean Wilson]

Thank you very much, sir. I'm very proud of it.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

You should be.

You referenced my best friend Jesus at the end of your treatise, and you seemed to imply that you know what he would do. I'm not so bold as to make a statement like that, but I do know in reading the Scriptures that when Jesus encountered activities that were illegal and illicit, he never condoned them, never. But he did meet with the lepers of the world. He did meet with the people who were tax cheats. He did meet with the adulteresses of the world. He always left them with one thing: go and sin no more. Right?

[Dean Wilson]

Yes, sir.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. So I don't see anywhere in the Scriptures that would support your statement. Anyway, I'm going to read something for you.

First I want to make a general statement. I'm a little disappointed in a couple of the presentations I heard today, because they're defending or arguing against the merits of Insite. I don't think that's what we're doing here today. We're talking about Bill C-2, which is about respecting and protecting communities.

The Supreme Court rendered a decision about Insite as a supervised injection site. The court affirmed the discretionary power of the minister to grant exemptions but stated that decisions must be made in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and balance public health and safety concerns. The court specified factors that the minister must consider when assessing an application for a supervised injection site. These included any evidence related to “the impact of such a facility on crime rates, the local conditions indicating a need for such a...site, the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, the resources available to support its maintenance, and expressions of community support or opposition.”

My question for you, Mr. Wilson, is this. Is it reasonable for the government to require community input on proposals to establish injection sites, especially given the Supreme Court's ruling that the minister must consider such views?

[Dean Wilson]

I think it's really important that the community have a say, and our community did have a say.

We have 12,000 addicts down there. I'm telling you, sir, nobody wants to be doing or to be sinning by doing drugs down there. They all want treatment, but there isn't any treatment, because the government doesn't fund enough treatment.

We have 12,000 people in downtown Vancouver, and we have 42 detox beds, sir. How do we get out of this problem? How do we do it?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I've heard from some of the other witnesses that there are treatment facilities available.

My question was very straightforward. Is it reasonable for the government to require community input? You indicated that it is.

[Dean Wilson]

I think it's very important.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

That's fair.

Mr. Berner, I would like to direct a question to you, as well. You seem to be supportive of the legislation as it is written, although I don't think you really addressed the legislation, which would ensure that communities, through a variety of different avenues, are consulted before an application would go forward to the minister. Would you support that?

[David Berner]

Absolutely. I quoted the legislation. That's why I quoted it. I believe that communities should be consulted.

Mr. Falk, you're dealing with a problem here that you may not be aware of. Health authorities and many medical people are extraordinarily arrogant. They will say to go ahead and consult communities, but they know better because they're the doctors.

I support the bill, and I support that you must go.... If the City of Abbotsford, the City of Laval, or any city in Canada wants to have one of these places, let's go to them and give them some information and ask if they want this on their street corner. My guess would be that 99% of them would tell us to get lost, and that would be a healthy response.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Berner.

Inspector Thompson, on the 27 criteria that the minister needs to consider in granting an exception, do you think the criteria in the bill are reasonable?

[Insp Scott Thompson]

I'll actually frame this in the context of past discussions I've had with other police services and with other advocates, I'll call them, across the country in other cities. One of the first questions has always been whether the local government supports a service such as an injection service. My experience and my opinion have been basically that without that support, which is fundamental in a democracy, you really have an uphill battle in terms of implementing a service.

I look at the bill, and certainly you'd want the community's input, and you would want input from the police. Those things are all quite reasonable because ultimately, as I've said, at some levels, locally it's a political decision. In Vancouver, you have to remember that back in 2002 we had three civic parties in that election, and all three of them supported the SIS. The party that came out on top was the most vigorous in its support, but all three were saying that they would implement an SIS.

Again, the voters of Vancouver at that time were not choosing—and we had a very high vote turnout—one side or the other. All sides of the question were supporting having such a facility open.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson.

We will now go to Ms. Davies, please, for seven minutes.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

First of all, Dean, I welcome you to Ottawa. I am very proud to have you here as a constituent from the downtown eastside. You're really kind of a hero in our community for the years of work that you've put in following these cases and being involved in VANDU. I know that it's been really hard on you personally sometimes, but you've always stuck with it, so I just want to say I'm really proud for the work you've done and that you are here today.

[Dean Wilson]

Thank you. I'm glad I'm still alive to be here.