Health committee  First of all, thank you very much for inviting me. I'd like to mention that I'm also a peer support worker in the city of Ottawa. I work pretty well first-hand and front-line with drug users, almost specifically opiate users, on a daily basis. DUAL is a non-profit that was fo

Health committee  Thank you.

Health committee  I've now been trained as a trainer to be able to do it, but it took a lot of work to do that. We've only given out 250 kits, or I should say Public Health has only given out 250 kits in Ottawa over five years. That's less than one kit a week. Now there are a lot of pharmacies tha

Health committee  I would like to see increased education, especially at the public school and high school levels. Harm reduction, frankly, saved my life. When it comes to needle distribution, distribution of these kits, and methadone, we can't talk right now, frankly, about drugs in a real sens

Health committee  I see, at least in Ottawa, children as young as 13 even getting into fentanyl. There seems to be no progression. When I was young, people would start with marijuana, then alcohol, and kind of progress their way up. They're starting at fentanyl and these hard-core opiates at a rea

Health committee  I think so for the most part. I think it needs a bit of tailoring, though. The drug court right now is pretty well abstinence-based. When people are failing, they're still being punished for their original crimes. In a lot of cases, though, it's worked really well for people. The