Mr. Speaker, the Correctional Service Canada, or CSC, offers a comprehensive suite of substance use treatment, support, and harm reduction services consistent with those offered in the community. Opioid Agonist Treatment, or OAT, is available to individuals with an opioid use disorder, or OUD, and is an effective treatment for OUD with literature demonstrating its success in reducing the use of illicit opioids and improving retention in addiction treatment. OAT is also effective in reducing the risk of HIV and hepatitis C infections among people who inject drugs and decreasing the harm associated with opioid use in prison and the likelihood of substance use upon return to the community. Effective OAT incorporates physical and mental health care and harm reduction delivered in an integrated fashion. For example, care includes provider-led counselling, substance use monitoring, provision of comprehensive primary care, harm reduction, education by health care professionals, the assessment and monitoring of emotional and mental health, and offering of psychosocial treatment interventions and supports.
Reducing the spread of infectious diseases makes institutions safer for employees and inmates, and it makes communities safer when inmates are released. One of the main ways that infectious diseases are transmitted in correctional institutions is through the sharing of illicit needles. The Prison Needle Exchange Program, or PNEP, gives federal inmates access to sterile needles in an effort to limit the transmission of infectious diseases.
Of the 13,619 offenders in custody on February 4, 2024, there were 3,129 offenders on OAT. Of those who were on OAT, 45 offenders were participating in the PNEP.