SCS are an essential health service within the fabric of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - SCS Review in YEG

Shelley Williams – Ex Director at HIV Edmonton for 8 years, I was Chair of the Coalition known as Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton, and was the executive director of Bissell Centre for 10 years. Bissell Centre has been providing supports and services to people in these communities for over a hundred years. These are not new issues in the community. 

Crime, garbage, tent cities, homelessness, poverty, real estate prices, policing, and the success of businesses cannot be tied directly to SCS.

These issues and dialogues have been around for a long time and continue to be important.  We do need to address them but Consumption services should not be the punching bag for these or for the lack of governments’ leadership in addressing them.

Taking them away – the issues being identified will NOT disappear.

The indisputable evidence clearly shows that SCS has a positive impact in our community. The reversal of an overdose means a life has been saved! To support a person who inject substances by helping them out of the back alleys and into a safer and respectful environment is the right way to address a societal issue that has been shunned. Punishing, telling people to stop or putting our heads in the ground - hoping that it will go away -- hasn’t worked. It takes acknowledgement, effort and quite frankly leadership to develop a range of supports. I commend the community organizations for their leadership. Consumption Services is the first critical service within the spectrum that is necessary because it keeps people alive AND provides the opportunity to develop a relationship and information as appropriate, when people are ready, of other possibilities. 

Edmonton tailored a strategy to meet the complex issues of people who would be using the services. Rather than building one stand-alone, storefront facility, such as Insite in Vancouver, the unique model took one site of 13 booths and dispersed micro sized services within community agencies that are already within the area and where the people are - who would utilize the program. The three sites have booths of 5, 5, and 3 making up the equivalency of one site. This is important - they are not 3 stand alone sites as being suggested. They also provide other health and social supports. 

There is work to be done, we need solutions - more services, more innovation, support to communities, and better municipal, provincial and federal strategies to address the range of issues that have been brought forward. BUT it cannot be at the cost of SCS. It is an essential health service and one that is within the fabric of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – both sections 7 and 15; legal and equality rights. It is an effective service to support the being in human being.

I implore the panel to be just and thoughtful. Ensure you decipher the comments heard appropriately, recommend that the document be public and make recommendations that include the continuation and expansion of SCS across the province. 

I stand in honour of my son's life & the lives of the lives of thousands of others who have died because of a poisoned drug supply.

Presentation to the SCS Review Panel in Medicine Hat

Kym Porter, September 3, 2019

My name is Kym Porter. I am a member of MSTH, the MH Drug Coalition and the MH SCS coalition. I stand before you tonight as an advocate for the marginalized, vulnerable, stigmatized, voiceless members of our community. After my son, Neil’s death from fentanyl poisoning, I retired as a director with the MH Catholic Board of Education. Grief encompasses every aspect of my life.

I stand in honour of his life and the lives of the over 11, 577 who have died because of a poisoned drug supply.

Because none of us can legitimately comment on the socio-economic effects of a supervised consumption site here in MH, and because this panel has access to the many reports containing such effects of these sites in this province, specifically I refer to the Alberta Community Based Report on Alberta’s Supervised Consumption Service Effectiveness, I will propose solutions to the crisis as I would see that as the overarching goal of this review.

As like all harm reduction advocates, we believe in evidence-based solutions.

As garnered from Chief Medical Health Officers across this country, the current drug policies are not only creating much of the harm, they are also a catastrophic failure. Drug policies are making things worse.

Solution # 1 -We need to end drug prohibition. The drug policies are as toxic as the drug supply. Read Chasing the Scream.

New policies, with a shift to a public health approach, instead of a political approach need to be developed quickly.

Solution # 2 - We need to deliver a safe supply as the toxicity will continue to drive the number of corpses increasingly higher.

Solution # 3 - We need to remove the barriers to harm reduction services, not take away what few life saving supports we have.

Solution # 4 - we need to connect people with life saving health services and supports such as safe care, ancestral healing practices, safe housing and income assistance.

Finally solution # 5 - we need to decriminalize possession for personal use.

In closing, I would like to share these words from Tommy Douglas, a pioneer and founder of Medicare:

We are all in this world together, and the only test of our character that matters is how we look after the least fortunate among us. How we look after each other, not how we look after ourselves. That’s all that really matters.

Thank you.

My son is still a human being! AND HE STILL DOES NOT DESERVE TO DIE!

A Letter to the SCS Review Board Hearing in Lethbridge AB -

Lori Hatfield, September 4, 2019

As a mother of a son struggling with addiction (going on 11 years now), I have walked the path of our broken systems alongside my son and I come with a different perspective than those suffering in the throes of addiction.

My son has at times lived at home, lived on his own, and been homeless. He has lived in Lethbridge, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Victoria, and Vancouver. My son does not want to be an addict. Some days he wins the fight, some days he does not. But he is still functional! He still loves. He still feels. He still does everything everyone else does. He is still a human being! AND HE STILL DOES NOT DESERVE TO DIE!

The Supervised Consumption Site is doing EXACTLY was it is designed to do – keep people from dying from using contaminated drugs. It also points its clientele towards available services – now if we had more services, we might be able to see some real decline in people in active addiction.

When I brought my son home from BC, we went to the SCS first thing on a Monday morning. He made contact with the Virtual Clinic and had a prescription for Suboxone later that same day. It was wonderful! Previously he would have had to wait 3 or 4 weeks for the “travelling addiction doctor” to be in town to either get a prescription or a change to his prescription. I can’t say enough about this service. For those that can’t abstain (which is not recommended by the experts anymore with regards to opiates), this service offers that window of opportunity when the desire for a change presents itself to someone suffering with addiction.

The main flaw in Lethbridge is that there is NOT enough wrap-around services for the amount of people suffering from addiction. When that window opens up where someone wants help, it can be weeks before that first step is available – the window has closed long before help is available and our vulnerable people are suffering due to these lack of services. Those proposing to stop funding to the SCS are playing God and they have no right to do so. We have the means and the know how to keep people alive – who has the right to say, “no you should die”. Which is exactly what will happen – people will DIE! DIE, DEAD, NO LONGER HERE. No chance for change, no window of opportunity. Addiction can be overcome. It does happen. It’s a very hard road to travel, but by God it happens every single day and we need to make sure that that opportunity is available every single day.

Stopping funding, thus closing the SCS is NOT going to change the needle debris in Lethbridge, it is not going to end addiction – it is only going to cause deaths. That will be the only outcome of this action. When my kids were little, we always searched the parks and playgrounds before letting our kids play – looking for broken glass and dog and cat feces. We searched then and you still need to search, only now you have to look for needles in addition to the other stuff. Yes it sucks, but it’s the way of life now in EVERY COMMUNITY – not just Lethbridge.

As far as crime goes, the SCS has been a dumping ground for blaming all that is wrong in Lethbridge. It is unfair and unwarranted. Nobody ever brings unemployment into the equation – that due to the slow down in Gas and Oil there are hundreds of people that were making very lucrative incomes and are now desperate to make ends meet – oh but they don’t commit crimes, they would never steal – its only addicts that do that.

Do you know how many people the death of one addict impacts – well there’s the mother and father, wife/husband perhaps children, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends . . . too numerous to count. Not only that, but children suffer the most from PTSD and the death of a parent. Imagine the environment of elementary, middle and high schools as these children grow-up.

I do not know what more we can do to make people realize the importance of Supervised Consumption Sites ALONG WITH ALL THE NECESSARY SERVICES that need to be available to people suffering from addiction. I do not think Lethbridge would be in this state of turmoil if we had had sufficient services put in place at the time of the opening of the SCS. There is only one reason the Supervised Consumption Site should have its funding stopped and that would be because there is safe supply and people do not need to worry about dying from using  contaminated drugs.

International Overdose Awareness Day 2019 with MSTH - Coast to Coast

Carpet Diem

“Where are you mum?”

This new day held so much promise as the May sun slanted through the bus window, one more stop and I would be home. I knew where Roger was. He was waiting for me. Stop the presses!

“I’m almost there.”

I rushed to the apartment and there he was waiting with his friend.

“Mum, I have a surprise. Don’t look, close your eyes. I’ll tell you when!”

It was Mothers Day, and my gift was in front of me smiling. His long black hair tied back in a ponytail showed his brown eyes framed in a sun-tanned face with an excess of shining teeth. He’d put on a few pounds and was wearing his best jeans and buttoned shirt. I could see the effort he put into his appearance and my heart melted.

He shooed me into the bedroom to wait for the unveiling. I heard the table scrape across the parquet floor. What could it be? I felt like a child at Christmas, but this was my child, now a grown lad of 28 preparing the surprise.

“You can come in now. Open your eyes.” His voice overflowed with excitement.

Roger was in the comfy seat with an expectant Cheshire grin on his face. The afternoon sun backlit the living room and there on the floor was the rug. This wasn’t any old rug; it was a magic carpet.

I whooped and cried as I threw myself onto its soft pile, crisscrossed with a harlequin pattern of sea blue and ocean foam grey.

“Roger it’s the beautiful rug I saw hanging at the Home Show!”

He laughed and joined me on the floor. I lay on my back and flung my arms ups.

“Do you like it mum?”

“Do I like it, Roger it’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

He hugged me and handed me a card,

“Open it mum.”

With an Oscar flourish I tore open the envelope. The card, pink with glittery butterflies and flowers was emblazoned with, “A Mum Grows More Precious as Time Goes By!”

Inside in Rogers’s strong childlike script he wrote:

“Mum, thank you so much for being there for me through my ups and downs. I would not still be here if not for you. I hope you like your gift and smile everyday when you see it,

I Love You, Roger xxx”

We hugged and I cried and we laughed as the sun warmed us.

I smile every day when I walk into the living room and see the rug. I smile and think of Roger. I cry too.

My heart swells thinking back to the time a month earlier when I saw Roger working at the rug booth in the Better Living Centre. He was so excited to invite me to the show, part of the Canada Blooms event. Lucy and I found the stall amid the clamour of the crowds and there I saw him. He was dressed smartly in a blue and red check shirt and dark pants. He radiated happiness. The booth was busy when I arrived and he said,

“Mum, take a look, what carpet do you like?”

I loved looking through them all, but I kept coming back to the blue and grey one. It reminded me of the Big Island of Hawaii where we once lived. It had such a vivid ocean blue colour cut with grey and a floating seaweed pattern weaved in and out.

“I like this one Roger.”

He agreed it was one of his favourite too. He was a charismatic salesman and told me all the dimensions, animated and engaged. I was so proud of him.

“In my dreams Roger, this is the one.”

He smiled.

A day like this might seem normal for some, but for us, it was transcendent. This was a miracle. The winter was thawing, and I could breathe again. This was his first job post rehab. He was in recovery.

Only 5 months earlier I had picked Roger up from downtown, destitute and scared; his disease of opioids addiction had taken him down. It was freezing rain that November morning and he had spent the night on the street pan handling in the Entertainment district. He told me later that a well-dressed man leaving a club saw him shivering on the sidewalk stoop and sat down beside him. They talked and the man reached into his pocket and gave him $10 saying

“Watch yourself brother.”

That stranger saved Roger’s life; the $10 allowed him to pay for a seat in a 24-hour Internet Café on Yonge Street. From there he logged on to a computer and messaged me.

“Mum, come get me.” It was a cry for help.

“Where are you Roger?”

Those dark days seemed so far behind us as we sat on the rug. A Mother’s day gift with such beautiful intention and a message of hope,

“Smile everyday when you see it Mum.”

I promise I will keep smiling through my tears. Roger would want that. There’s a saying I saw in Roger’s Narcotics Anonymous book,

“As long as the ties that bind us together are stronger than those that would tear us apart, all will be well.”

The ties that bind Roger and I together are as tight as the threads in our magic carpet and they reach to heaven.

Irene Paterson