SNUD Committee Meeting

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON NON-MEDICAL USE OF DRUGS

COMITÉ SPÉCIAL SUR LA CONSOMMATION NON MÉDICALE DE DROGUES OU MÉDICAMENTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, December 6, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.)): I call this meeting to order.

We are the Special Committee on Non-medical Use of Drugs, and we are very pleased to be here in Abbotsford this afternoon. We apologize for being a little late; you'll see some people who are still coming in, but we've held you up for 15 minutes, at least, already.

I'll just explain a couple of things to people. We have a list of presenters who are here with us. We have a group of technicians who are recording everything that is being said today in both official languages. Everybody has interpretation sets here, and while they're really good for interpretation, they're also very good if you can't hear clearly enough, as you can listen in English as well. If anyone needs one of those, we'll be happy to get you one.

Committees of the House of Commons are comprised of members from all five parties, but because there have been votes in the House this week and because it's fairly expensive to travel, we have a smaller complement than we normally would have. But all of us have access to the testimony, and all of you have access to the testimony, through the website; we will share the information with our colleagues, and they will have the benefit of that.

My name is Paddy Torsney, and I'm a Liberal member of Parliament from Burlington, Ontario, which is not far from Toronto. Randy White is vice-chair of the committee, and he is a member of the Canadian Alliance—I don't have to tell anybody here that, he's a famous guy. Dominic LeBlanc is a Liberal member of Parliament from Beauséjour, which is Moncton, New Brunswick. With us on this tour we also had Stephen Owen in Vancouver for a day, and we had Libby Davies from the NDP. We have two Bloc members, we have a Tory member, and while you've all seen the House of Commons on TV and you think it's sort of intense, we actually get along quite well. We have different perspectives, but especially on these issues we're trying to deal with, there's quite a bit of common ground.

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Before I turn to Mr. White for an entrée, I will introduce our witnesses today. From the Campbell Valley Women's Centre we have Terri-Lee Seeley; as an individual we have Jamie Hamilton; from an organization called Taking Back the Streets we have Diane Sowden; from the Abbotsford Detox Steering Committee we have Uultsje De Jong. Dana, I don't have you.

Mr. Dana Larsen (Editor, Cannabis Culture Magazine): I'm from Cannabis Culture magazine, Dana Larsen.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Dana Larsen: I know I'm not on there, but I'm here.

The Chair: Okay, we're happy to have you.

What we'll do, after I turn the mike over to Randy for a few minutes, is have each of you—and we have a little timer—speak for about five minutes. I'll give you a warning at five minutes, and you can wrap up in the next minute. You're welcome to leave testimony with us, you're welcome to get us more things afterwards, but because we have already started running a little bit late, it will allow us more time for questions and answers, and we'll do that round afterwards.

Randy, did you want to say something?

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Canadian Alliance): Yes, thank you, Madam Chairman.

I have a couple of comments for those of you who are here. This is probably one of the few times a committee of the House of Commons has been in this area, so I do want to thank my two colleagues from the House of Commons. Although they are not with the party I represent, they are as interested as I am in this issue of drugs. We've been going across the country with various members trying to get a handle on making recommendations for a national drug strategy, and your input here could very well be a piece of the key we're looking for. If you think your opinions here today might be diverse, try the last four days in Vancouver. There were opinions that ranged over the whole gamut on this whole issue of drugs. We have to try to find our way through this and make recommendations by November 2002. Thank you for coming, and we look forward to talking to you.

The Chair: Thank you.

And now Terri-Lee Seeley is up.

Ms. Terri-Lee Seeley (Executive Director, Campbell Valley Women's Centre): Thank you.

Madam Chairperson and committee members, thank you for providing me with this opportunity to address your committee on such an important issue as the use of non-prescribed drugs. The population I will be addressing today are youths, and particularly young women.

I represent Campbell Valley Women's Centre, a residential treatment facility for young women between the ages of 13 and 19 located in South Langley. We are a 15-bed facility, yet only four beds are presently funded and utilized. Our waiting list is long, and our next vacancy is February 2002. The young women we work with have been labelled the most difficult to serve. Historically, they have experienced several failed foster placements, are not presently in school, and have burned many of the bridges in their families and social service network. When we look at our statistics, we see that half the young women who enter treatment identify themselves as having been sexually exploited, meaning that they have been coerced into selling themselves on the street for drugs or to avoid physical abuse from their pimps. During treatment up to 80% of the young women come to realize that sexual exploitation has been part of their lives as well, but they were so entrenched in the drug scene that they had a difficult time identifying this abuse.

The average age of attendance at the centre is 16 and a half. One-third of the young women are dependent on heroin, and one-third are dependent on cocaine. The younger women tend to be dependent on alcohol. Most of the young women have been multiple drug users, their first experiences being with tobacco, marijuana, and alcohol, and 24% of our residents have begun to inject either heroin or cocaine.

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When we first see the young women, we recognize their critical health concerns. Often there is need for treatment of STDs, fear of hepatitis C and HIV infections. Unprotected sex continues to be an issue. Eating disorders are common. Forty-two per cent of our residents are considered co-disordered, with a co-existing condition of depression, anxiety disorder, ADHD, and borderline personality disorder. These are issues that need to be addressed concurrently with the substance dependency treatments.

As you can imagine, the vulnerability and risk of this population is extreme. At present there are four treatment beds offered at our centre and another three in Vancouver for young women. The attention of our present system to the needs of these children is offensive. In my view, an obsolete notion exists that young women may be perhaps misguided, or perhaps they are going through a rebellion, a developmental phase, or perhaps it's just experimentation. All these premises are couched in the view that this is not a serious problem, it will go away with maturity or lessons learned, the family can heal on its own, resources are not required.

The danger in this approach is that we are not treating these young women seriously. We are not taking the issue of addiction seriously. The softer end of providing a buddy or a healthy family environment alone will not assist these young women in their healing. The harsh reality is that we have young women selling their bodies for drugs, being vulnerable to coercion into the sex trade, injecting drugs, and being physically vulnerable to the risks and harm this creates. This is as serious an issue as we have in the adult world, but we do not pay attention or provide the resources needed.

Let's take these young women seriously. Let's decide that they are worth the resources and a comprehensive effort to provide a continuum of care that includes a structured safe residential treatment setting, that challenges these young women, because they are capable, they are bright, and they are able, when given the opportunity, to achieve and succeed in education, increasing their self-esteem, learning to become friends and support systems to other young women, heal family relationships, and most of all, care for themselves in a way that keeps them moving forward on their own behalf.

At present we offer four beds in the province of British Columbia for young women who are on probation and have been ordered to attend treatment by the courts, a federally funded initiative with good intentions, but given that our funding is tied to this criterion, we're not able to provide beds to young women who are not in conflict with the law. Frustrated parents ask, does my daughter need to go to jail before she can get treatment?. This criminalization of the disease of addiction creates a barrier for those young women and their families who are desperately searching for assistance. They know all too well that their daughters have gone beyond the point of reaching out to their families for support or receiving counselling once per week. A structured, safe, fully supervised environment is required. Right now we have a two-tiered system. Young women on probation are funded, and those who can afford to pay can gain immediate access to the treatment facilities. The rest, the majority, have no access to our services.

What do we need? We need more beds in this province for youth. We need policies that reflect the serious reality that youth are in trouble with their addiction. Their resources are fewer than those for adults, their choices are fewer, and their reality is often harsher. Sixteen-and-a-half years old, injecting heroin, selling your body for your next fix, and being accountable to someone who beats you if you don't earn enough money every night on the street—how much more serious does it get?

The Chair: Thanks you, Ms. Seeley, and thank you very much for being five minutes and 50 seconds!

Now Ms. Hamilton.

Ms. Jamie Hamilton (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much for inviting me today.

Madam Chair, I'm a recovering drug addict. I was asked to be here, and whenever I'm asked to do any kind of speaking about my experience with drugs, I'm always happy to do it. I'm certainly not here to give anyone any answers, because I don't think I have them. I do, however, have some experience, so that's what I'm going to talk about today.

I was living in Asia, teaching English, and I took a quick trip to Thailand, where it seemed quite harmless to begin smoking heroin. I was there for about a year, and I smoked every day. When I got back to Canada, I really thought it was just something I did while I was there, and I would never do it again here.

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I was wrong. I came back to Vancouver in the winter, and I started selling everything I owned, started going through all the money I had saved, and eventually ended up on Vancouver's east side, Main and Hastings, where I lived for five years in my addiction, intravenously using cocaine and heroin. I worked the streets, I stole, I lied, I cheated, and drugs absolutely brought me right down to the pit of society. I know what it's like to live down there. I know it's a very difficult way to live. I came from a good family, my parents loved me, but they were helpless as I descended into this nightmare. So it doesn't necessarily just happen to people who are sexually exploited or beaten or foster care kids. It happened to me, and if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

I went to jail several times. I was arrested for shoplifting. I did whatever I could do to get my next fix. When I had been living with my drug dealer for a couple of years and realized that I was pregnant by him, I wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but this guy wouldn't let me. So I gave birth to a drug-addicted baby. My family was horrified, of course, and nobody really knew what to do.

I found some help with an outreach program called Sheway, and they directed me to some other people who helped. I gave birth to the baby four years ago, and he was so beautiful and so perfect and precious that when I looked at him for the first time, I couldn't believe something so beautiful had come from me, and I asked God for help. I didn't know who God was or what God was, but I needed help, and I knew I needed help. I think, from the moment I asked for help, things started falling into my life that were there to help me.

I got on a waiting list for a treatment centre that would allow me to bring my baby. It was Peardonville here in Abbotsford, and at the time it was the only place in Canada that would allow a mother to bring her child or her children. I wouldn't have been able to get any treatment for my problem if it weren't for that place. I brought my baby, I was on a waiting list for six months, and I've been clean and sober ever since. My little boy is four, he's beautiful, and I feel I have been given a true gift in life. I love my life today. I'm married, my little boy is in preschool, I'm here in Abbotsford, I'm a mom, and I love my life today.

I took advantage of the needle exchange program when I was down there, and I was just saying to my friend next to me here, thank God for that needle exchange, because I made it through that addiction without having any diseases that would kill me. I feel really grateful about that.

I think what we need is more detox and more treatment beds, because several times while I was on the streets I wanted help and was told to wait five months, call us later, or call us two months from now. There's a small window of opportunity for a drug addict. When they reach out for help, you have to get them right then, as tomorrow is too late. So my belief is that we just need more beds and more treatment facilities.

Is that about five minutes?

The Chair: Thanks. We'll have some more time in the question and answer session.

Ms. Jamie Hamilton: Okay. Thanks for listening.

The Chair: Thanks so much, Ms. Hamilton.

Now Diane Sowden.

Ms. Diane Sowden (Executive Director and Co-Founder, Children of the Street Society): Madam Chair, committee members, thank you for giving me the opportunity of speaking with you today.

My name is Diane Sowden, and I'm the executive director and co-founder of Children of the Street Society. We were incorporated in 1994. We work with families, both the parents and the youth, who have been affected by non-prescription drugs and are either at risk or involved in the sex trade. We do a lot of work on prevention and education in the schools and public forums, and we're asked to do a lot of workshops with non-profit organizations with high-risk youth.

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The reason I got involved in this issue is that in 1993 my 13-year-old daughter was lured away from our home by a drug dealer pimp in our community. Catherine spent the next six and a half years on the streets of downtown east side. She first was addicted to crack cocaine, and then smoked heroin, before moving to injecting heroin. She had a $400 a day drug habit by the time she was 15 years old. At the age of 14, and then again at the age of 16, she was pregnant. The first baby was born a crack baby, the second a heroin-affected baby.

This brings me to the main point I would like to address when considering supervised injection sites, and even the possibility of prescription heroin. Some of the reasons I have heard mentioned for moving in the direction of supervised injection sites are the need to decrease the death rate from overdose and the pressure from community members tired of seeing addiction on the street and addicts injecting on their streets. I know you are going to hear from expert witnesses, stakeholders, and the public at large in the hope of reducing the harm from alcohol and other drugs to individuals, families, and communities.

I'd like to be the voice of one of the most horrible impacts associated with moving in this direction, the voice of the babies that are born drug-affected. If the federal government plans to support supervised injection sites and can, in clear conscience, go in this direction, knowing they are going to be playing a part that will affect the quality of life of babies born to the drug-addicted mothers, you must also be held responsible for funding to provide the appropriate resources and support for the lifespan of those individuals.

My husband and I are grandparents raising severely drug-affected babies. Our provincial government has not the funds or the resources to properly support my family through this ordeal. We are discriminated against because we are the grandparents. My two grandchildren were apprehended by the government and put in government care at birth, which happens to a high percentage of such babies. Because we are the grandparents, they are placed with us under what's called a restricted foster home; we are paid $701 a month to cover the needs of these special needs children. If we were not willing, as grandparents, to take on this, they would be placed in a level 3 home because of their special needs, and somebody would be paid $2,418 each for the care of those same children.

I cannot work for an employer outside our home because of the demands of doctor appointments, team management meetings, social worker meetings, speech, language, and occupational therapy, surgeries, lobbying for assessments to be done on my grandchildren, so that we can get the appropriate resources and support in place for them. Right now I have a four-year-old grandson who's supposed to be starting kindergarten in September. I can't even get an assessment done so that the school knows what resources are needed to support him in school.

What defects are associated with prenatal exposure to drugs such as cocaine and heroin and the long-term problems, and what are the costs? Is the federal government prepared to make sure that these are covered if you are going to move into being part of the people supplying an area for injection?

The effects for the infants are physical defects, deformities, slow development, sleeping difficulties, eating difficulties, overstimulation, sensitivity to noise and light. Try to be a parent, a grandparent, or a caregiver to a drug-affected baby for the first six months. You don't get any sleep.

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Among the effects on a preschool age child is hearing impairment. My grandchildren both get ear infections, which have caused hearing loss. They have both had surgery on their ears, the older, who is six, twice, the younger one once. I have been told they both will need surgery on their ears every year and a half until they're approximately 13 years old. Because of the hearing impairment, they are delayed in speech and vocabulary. I am the only one who can understand the four-year-old. How is a teacher in the system going to deal with him and his frustration?

Then there are poor judgment and difficulties in recognizing danger. For my husband and I to go out, I cannot hire a teenager from down the street to baby-sit. That would be putting my grandchildren at danger. I don't get support, because I need someone special in the home to look after them.

There are destructive behaviour, temper tantrums, and hyperactivity. My four-year-old is on Ritalin, and he has been on it since he was two and a half. He cannot function, and no one in the home or in day care can function, without his being on medication. They also have poor motor skills, and are emotionally overreactive.

The effects on school age children and teens are learning disabilities; memory difficulties; difficulty separating facts from fantasy; lying; stealing; social behaviour problems; immaturity; problems with changing routine—the structure in our home is like a treatment centre for a young person; need for teacher's aides. The list is so long I can't go on with it, because I'll run out of my time, but the cost is going to be much longer, and you have to think about that.

By going in the direction of supervised injection sites, the federal government is taking part in the enabling of the addiction, knowing this could be the beginning of a generational problem. My grandchildren are at higher risk of becoming drug addicts or alcoholics because they were born that way.

As parents of a drug-addicted child, we hoped that our daughter would get the treatment, so that she would be able to be a healthy, functioning individual, contributing to our society, not just an addict who is being kept alive. She's worth much more than that.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Sowden.

Mr. De Jong.

Mr. Uultsje De Jong (Abbotsford Detox and Youth Rehab Steering Committee): Madam Chairperson, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I would have liked to speak on some new initiative I'd come up with or to make some profound statement about how the country should deal with the issue of drugs. However, I find myself coming back to the same thought: where has our common sense gone?

I could go to any meeting and ask everyone who has been affected by drugs or alcohol to raise their hand and, I would suggest, the majority of hands would be raised. Why then are people not yelling, enough is enough? Too often we focus our attention only on the hard-core addicts, the disadvantaged, while we conveniently overlook the recreational user. Too many individuals who supposedly function well in society, those who manage their drug use and lead normal lives, make drugs acceptable. We need to concentrate more of our money on education, treatment, job skills training, and housing.

Personal and family values need to be changed, and a holistic approach must be used. We should not be afraid to use the word spiritual as well, unless, of course, you're the Prime Minister, who stated that it's okay to be spiritual, just don't talk about it. Maybe that's what the federal Auditor General meant when she was quoted as saying “poor leadership has seriously hampered Canada's ability to tackle the multi-billion dollar problem of illicit drugs”.

We need to expand and support the existing teaching curriculum in our schools and develop local programs, where needed, dealing with substance abuse, life skills, coping and parenting skills.

How can we best help those who need it? Some would suggest that harm reduction should form the main pillar in a four pillar approach. I would, however, agree with others who have suggested that harm reduction could be better termed harm extension. In 1987, when the Canadian government adopted harm reduction as part of its framework for Canada's national drug strategy, they defined harm as “sickness, death, social misery, crime, violence and economic costs to all levels of government.” Here we are 14 years later dealing with steady increases in HIV and hepatitis rates in Vancouver, which continue to skyrocket, in spite of the fact that the needle exchange handed out 3.2 million needles last year alone.

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Sickness and death continue to plague those involved in the drug culture, and the social misery can be witnessed in downtown Abbotsford on any given evening. We have a property crime rate that is a direct reflexion of the issue of drugs, and the economic costs have continued to skyrocket. The city of Abbotsford is the fifth largest city in British Columbia, and in the year 2000 we were ranked fourth in the number of drug-related deaths in the province. When looking at our society, it's becoming clear that our current attack on the social ills facing children, youth, and families is in disarray.

To government the use of needle exchanges and safe injection sites may seem like a quick fix for an ever bigger problem, but I am suggesting that we need to work at the family and social issues that lie at the root of the problem. Just getting someone clean from drugs won't solve it. As I said earlier, we must approach this from a holistic point of view. Are you prepared, as leaders of our country, to have individuals place needles in your sons', your daughters', your grandsons', or your granddaughters' hands? Are you willing to have your children taken to a so-called safe injection site so they can push a drug into themselves that we know kills? At least they will have died using a clean needle in a safe manner. What are we saying to the young people in this country, sorry, this is the best we can do? If this is all we can offer, we are in a sorry state.

Finally, I believe more money should be spent on detox and treatment, especially for youth. Because detox facilities are not available when needed, we are all affected. In the lower mainland there are 47 treatment beds available for youth, 13 for females, 34 for males. Of the 47 beds available a number are blocked by first nations, Corrections, and the Ministry for Children and Families, again reducing the number of beds available for those in crisis who do not meet those criteria.

A young person who is refused detox today because there is no space available will affect the residents of Abbotsford tonight. Someone in Abbotsford will lose some property so this young man's habit can be fed. The young girl who is someone's daughter, someone's granddaughter, will turn ten tricks tonight, because her uncontrollable appetite tells her she needs more of those drugs to survive.

It's our responsibility as a community and as a nation to ensure that the facilities are there when our young people come to a point in their life where they ask for help. This year alone 30,000 children and families in British Columbia will require services beyond what their families and community can give them. In our throwaway society, are we prepared to begin throwing away our sons and daughters as well?

I would make the following recommendations. Develop early intervention and prevention programs for schools, expanding on existing curriculum and developing local programs where needed, programs designed to deal with children in crisis. Create educational programs for parents to develop life skills and coping skills. Make more money available for detox and treatment facilities that are accessible to all. We must have facilities available when needed. Treatment must be long-term and concentrate on the whole person, not just their addiction. A holistic approach would be most effective.

Government should consider using more P3s, public-private partnerships, in the development of new detox and treatment facilities. With less government involvement and more community ownership, the commitment to success would be greater. The government should move away from the promotion of needle exchanges and safe injection sites. They do not work, and we owe our children more than just harm reduction.

The decriminalization of certain drugs sets us all on the edge of a very slippery slope. Our efforts would be better spent in enforcing and strengthening the laws in regard to cultivation and manufacturing of drugs, as well as the trafficking of drugs.

A national drug commission should be set up with representation from provincial advisory boards. This commission would be responsible for enforcement of a national drug strategy, with representation from government agencies, but working at arm's-length from government itself.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. De Jong.

And now Dana Larsen from Cannabis Culture magazine.

Mr. Dana Larsen: Hello, and thanks for having me here today. I am editor of Cannabis Culture magazine. I'm also leader of the B.C. Marijuana Party. In the last provincial election the B.C. Marijuana Party received over 53,000 votes, totalling just under 3.5% of the total given in the province.

Cannabis Culture is a magazine printed in Canada. We print 70,000 copies, which are distributed across North America to a wide variety of retail and mainstream outlets. Our magazine is all about marijuana and cannabis. I feel that here today I represent myself and the magazine. I also represent the 2 to 3 million Canadians who use marijuana on a regular basis and the 200 to 300 million people who use cannabis regularly around this planet.

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We see ourselves as an oppressed group that is suffering from a universal pogrom around the face of this planet. This might seem like an extreme statement to some, but in many nations of the world people who grow, consume, and trade in cannabis are executed, as in China and other nations like that. In Canada we see a massive amount of money being spent in a propaganda campaign against marijuana users. We have a law censoring information about cannabis, so that my magazine itself is actually banned in Canada under section 462.2 of the Criminal Code, which bans all literature for illicit drug use. In fact, our magazine has been pulled off store shelves a number of times in Canada. I'm proud to say we are Canada's most seized magazine, but it'd be much better, of course, if that weren't the case and if we were allowed to have our information given freely.

Marijuana is not the only plant with which people seem to see themselves as part of a cultural group when they use it. Plants like poppies and coca also have ancient historical uses in the places where they're grown around the world. It seems to me great hypocrisy for us to be going to war against other countries and those who grow these plants, where they've been growing them for thousands of years as part of their culture, and where these plants are intrinsically combined with their spiritual and social practices, as poppies, cannabis, and coca plants are in their areas of the world.

What we're seeing is a form of cultural genocide. What we're saying to these peoples around the world is, because we can't handle the plants you provide, we're going to force you to stop using them. We're seeing it in places like Colombia, where there are massive efforts on the part of the U.S. government, spending billions of dollars spraying toxic poisons over the fields where they're growing coca plants. Yet these plants have been growing there for millennia, and to these people, it's part of their culture. So to me this seems a very wrong way to go about dealing with the drug problems we're having in Canada.

I've testified before other committees. I followed all the debate and testimony on the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which was passed by Parliament in 1996, I believe. I also testified before the Senate recently in their committee hearings, and I testified before the Senate in regard to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I must say I'm a bit cynical about being here again and having yet another committee looking at these issues. When Parliament passed the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, they promised that there would be a drug policy review made shortly after this bill was passed. That committee was formed, they had a few hearings, then we had an election, and that committee vanished. So it's been five years now since we've had any real look at Canada's drug policy.

In my mind, we should go back to the Le Dain commission that was held over 30 years ago, which was a comprehensive analysis of our drug policy in Canada, regarding both marijuana and other drugs. As I see it, doing this over and over again, hearing the same kinds of people saying the same kinds of things, is a stalling tactic. On the part of the cannabis culture, we'd like to see some changes made, not having endless committee hearings looking at these issues over and over again. It's been done.

There's a lot I could say, but time is limited, so I want to point out the absolute futility of what we're calling the war on drugs. In any Canadian prison and any American prison right now you can get pretty much any drug you want. If we can't keep drugs out of prisons, how are we going to keep them out of our country? Are we going to create a prison state in order to fight this war on drugs? We've had ever increasing levels of prosecution and of incarceration for marijuana users and for all other drug users in this country. The RCMP has made more marijuana arrests every year for the last few years, while they're making fewer arrests in every other category of crime.

We actually have people talking here about the lack of help for children who have drug problems, as well as a lack of help for those who are addicted to drugs, yet we're spending more and more each year on police going after marijuana growing operations and marijuana smokers. This, to me, is a horrible misdirection of resources.

If we want to help a drug-addicted child, if we want to help the underage person who's working prostitution on the streets, if we want to help those who have problems with their substance use, let's stop persecuting those who have no problems with their drug use. Let's stop persecuting the marijuana smokers who are not addicts, not criminals, not bad people, but people who like to smoke marijuana, whether for medical use, or for social use, or because it makes us feel good. That's not a crime, and we're tired of being treated like criminals. We would like to see a change in government policy whereby money is spent helping those who have problems with their drug use, and not persecuting those who have no problems with their use.

Marijuana is a natural, safe plant. We talked about spiritual use, and there are many people around the world who consider cannabis to be an intrinsic part of their spiritual practice, as in India, where they've used cannabis for thousands of years in the worship of the gods there. There are newer groups, such as the Church of the Universe based in Ontario, which for over 30 years has practised using cannabis as their sacrament. There are many other groups out there who use cannabis in a spiritual fashion, in a medical fashion, in a social fashion. We're not criminals, and I ask you to stop persecuting us, stop sending the police after us, and end the war on marijuana.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Larsen.

To clarify, my notes suggest that you wanted to come here, we didn't ask you to come, that you called us and asked if you could appear before us.

Mr. Dana Larsen: Yes.

The Chair: Okay. I just wanted to clarify whether we were forcing you to come and tell us, or whether you...

Mr. Dana Larsen: I do this. This is what I enjoy doing.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. White, I believe you have some questions.

Mr. Randy White: It doesn't sound like he enjoys it all that much.

The Chair: We won't go there.

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Mr. Randy White: I'd like to just get this one out of the way. Mr. Larsen, I just had a drug addict tell me the culture he was into with marijuana led him into cocaine and led him into heroin. Would you agree with that statement?

Mr. Dana Larsen: I don't know about that particular person, but I can tell you that there are millions of marijuana smokers in Canada, and only a tiny percentage of them move on to other drugs. I would say that fellow probably also smoked tobacco and used alcohol before he had moved to other drugs, but I wouldn't say those things were the causal factor. Those who like using other drugs will move towards those things. If marijuana ceased to exist, it wouldn't end the use of heroin and cocaine in our country. So I don't believe the use of marijuana is related to those drugs, except for the fact that they're all illegal. If you followed the Dutch policy, where they separate marijuana from other drugs, I'd say we'd see even less of a connection between marijuana use and use of other substances.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you.

I'd like to ask the others about this idea of harm reduction we've been hearing about right across the country to different degrees. Many have the position that there's not enough detox, there are not enough short-term, intermediate, long-term care facilities. Meanwhile we've got to try to keep people alive until that happens, so we want something called harm reduction, which includes heroin maintenance, condom exchange, safe injection sites, needle exchange, methadone treatment, and some other things. What do you think of that position?

The Chair: Does anyone wish to comment?

Mr. Randy White: Someone is going to comment, or I'll have to.

The Chair: You don't have to. Those are our rules.

Ms. Hamilton.

Ms. Jamie Hamilton: I don't have an opinion on whether harm reduction is good or bad. I can just tell you that in my experience, when I was on methadone, it didn't stop me from going to get more heroin. I did the methadone and the heroin. It didn't take me off the street and make me stop committing crimes. There's an insatiable need for more when you're an addict. When I'm in my addiction, I can never get enough. If I were getting something from my doctor, I would also still be looking for more on the street. It didn't take me off the street. I can only tell you about my experience.

As I was saying before, I used the needle exchange, and thank God for the needle exchange, because now I'm a mother and I don't have a death sentence over my head, but I think that anything that's not geared toward abstinence is a waste of time. You have to get off the drugs. If you're not geared towards that, then it's useless.

The Chair: Thank you.

Did anyone else wish to comment?

Ms. Sowden.

Ms. Diane Sowden: When my daughter was out on the streets, she did use the needle exchange, which I am thankful for, but I wished she didn't have to use that, I wished she was able to get treatment the times she asked for it. I think we are enabling a lot of the times when we're talking about harm reduction. If you ask Catherine, what you call harm reduction, she calls harmful reduction. I think there is a difference between moving a young person and helping them to get clean and supplying services that keep them in that life. I think a lot of time that's what happens with harm reduction, we don't give that young person the incentive to move out of the life they're in.

The Chair: Thank you.

Dominic, I think, has a question.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.): Thank you, Paddy. Thank you, all of you, for coming this afternoon.

Jamie, I find your story very compelling. I admire your courage in coming before a group like this and telling your story. Frankly, it makes a lot of the work we're trying to do meaningful if we can find hundreds and hundreds of other examples like you, and your story, hopefully, will inspire other people. I think you deserve our congratulations and our thanks for what you're doing. I think that should be acknowledged.

I'm wondering, Jamie, what would be your view, having lived in the difficult circumstances we saw earlier this week in Vancouver, about decriminalizing marijuana?

• 1530

Ms. Jamie Hamilton: I don't really have an opinion. I started off using marijuana, and I used it the same way I used heroin and cocaine, as if I just could never get enough. So from my own experience, I don't think it's a good idea. I don't know. I don't have an answer. I just know that if you're a drug addict like me, you can't do any of that. You can't do heroin, cocaine, or even marijuana.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: This is a subject on which Randy and I have asked different people—and I'll ask it today, Randy, you've asked it in other sessions. From people you knew in those days, Jamie, can one be addicted to marijuana as you can be addicted to, for example, heroin?

Ms. Jamie Hamilton: Yes, absolutely. It changes your mood. It's a mood altering substance, and I know I tried to quit smoking marijuana and I couldn't. Mr. Larsen over here thinks they're not addicts, and I believe they are. Anybody who smokes marijuana daily is an addict, in my opinion. That's just my opinion, though.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Jamie, one final thing. One thing we've heard a lot about is the treatment programs that are offered. Consensus is not easy in this discussion. Randy and I have been marvelling at the lack of consensus, even as the five of you are lined up there. That's part of what makes this interesting and useful, but there is a consensus that there need to be more treatment facilities, treatment beds, detox beds, rehabilitation programs. Needle exchanges and safe shooting sites are more controversial, but they are part of a process of, hopefully, getting into some of these other facilities. Perhaps I shouldn't even have opened that, as it is a complicated issue. But in the treatment program you went into, for example, was it a very long program? Was it an outpatient thing, or were you a resident in a program? We've seen some that are three weeks where there are a lot of people who relapse, and we've some that are a year long and seem to have a much higher success rate. What's your view on how some of those programs operate?

Ms. Jamie Hamilton: I went to Peardonville here in Abbotsford, and I stayed, I think, two and a half months. I was on a waiting list for about six months to get in, so by the time I got there I was very happy to be there. I think a lot of people who get there aren't necessarily in the same frame of mind I was. I had a baby, I wanted to be his mother, and I wanted to change my life. So I wanted to be there more than anything, and I was willing to do anything to get what these people were talking about and to be sober and clean and a useful member of our society.

I think that's the key. You can't force this on someone. If they don't want to get recovery, they're not going to get it. All I can tell you is about my experience, and I wanted it badly, and that's why I'm here today. That's why I'm able to talk to you guys, because I just wanted to be here and I wanted to be sober and clean.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you very much for sharing your story with us.

The Chair: Thank you.

I just have one quick question, and maybe it's something more for the other people who are appearing before us. One of the things we heard a lot of in Vancouver was the need for communities like Abbotsford to have programs, whether it was needle exchanges, rehab centres, detox centres, or whatever, so that people didn't have to go down to Vancouver. Are there enough services within this town, or towns like this across Canada, in your opinion or your experience, to allow people to solve their problems where they are?

Uultsje.

Mr. Uultsje De Jong: There's no detox and no treatment centre for youth, really, in the Fraser Valley, and that's the problem. Yes, you have to be ready to go, but when you're ready to go, there has to be space available for you, and right now there isn't. You could have somebody who wants to go today, but they have to wait until tomorrow. Well, tomorrow's too late. As Jamie said, the window of opportunity is small, and we need more here in the Fraser Valley, for sure.

The Chair: Ms. Sowden.

Ms. Diane Sowden: I disagree with the fact that we should only have drug treatment facilities set up for people who are willing to go into treatment. When we're talking about youth, there are times we need to intervene, even if a child or a young person does not want treatment. There is a treatment facility in Alberta called Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre, or AARC. I've been there. I know 12 families from B.C. who have taken their youth to that facility. It's long-term, up to a year, and it doesn't only treat the young person with the addiction, it treats the whole family. Anyone who has had a child or a youth in their home who's an addict realizes that it destroys the family unit. If the family was not dysfunctional before the addiction, they become dysfunctional because of the addiction. And to make sure that young person is able to come back into that home, as long as the home's safe, the family has to do some work as well, because there's a lot of guilt, anger, frustration, and the parents and other siblings in the home are going to have scars put on them.

• 1535

I am so impressed with the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre. Their success rate is 85%, but it's long-term. As I said, I know 12 families that have taken their youth, against their will, out of B.C. because there is no way of getting help, other than criminalizing a child, in B.C.

The Chair: Uultsje again.

Mr. Uultsje De Jong: I agree with Ms. Sowden, but the provincial government here passed a Secure Care Act, whereby the government could take someone off the street if they felt they were in danger of harming themselves. That's an excellent thing to do, but it's not implemented, because we don't have those facilities and the resources available.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Dana Larsen: If I could make one point, it's just that when we're talking about detox and all these things, let's make note that nobody's going to detox for marijuana. No marijuana addicts are signing themselves in, stealing property, committing crimes in order to get their marijuana. It does not happen. When I testified before the Senate committee, the head of the Vancouver narcotics department spoke. He said he did not consider marijuana to be like other drugs at all, that there weren't any marijuana addicts committing crimes, certainly not on anything near the scale of what happens with other drugs. So just remember that. Marijuana is not addictive in that sense. I don't know what that means, but it's a different kind of thing. People aren't committing crimes or prostituting themselves to get a joint. It's not happening.

The Chair: One of the good things about meeting with a lot of people is, of course, that we get different views.

Mr. Dana Larsen: Certainly.

The Chair: I'll leave it at that.

Ms. Jamie Hamilton: I committed crimes to get marijuana.

The Chair: Ms. Seeley.

Ms. Terri-Lee Seeley: I'd just like to comment, not to open up another can of worms, but to stay with the same one, harm reduction in youth. None of us is saying we want to see youth or adults die on the street. If it's a life or death situation, I think any of us would say intervention is required, whether that's needle exchange or some of the things that are available in the downtown east side.

My experience, which is over 20 years working with adults and youth in substance dependency, is that if you look at someone and say, “Your life's a mess, what do you want?”, more often than not the answer is, “I want treatment, and if I have to, I'll use the needle exchange, because I don't want to die. What I really want is my family back, I want treatment, I want my relationships back, I want my kids, I want to be safe. I don't want to be stoned, living on the downtown east side selling my body.” But none of us wants them to die either. I think that's the difficulty in discussing harm reduction and treatment, because we don't want them to die. If we could give them treatment as an option, I think the majority of people would use it.

The Chair: Okay.

We can have one final comment from Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: Thanks.

Terri-Lee, you've been running Campbell Valley Women's Centre, and in my opinion, it is one of the better facilities in the Fraser Valley, at least physical facilities. It has come close to going bankrupt. You're having trouble getting referrals from government. What exactly is the problem with support from municipal, federal, or provincial governments?

The Chair: As a corollary, I guess, why do you only have four beds open, when you have fifteen?

Ms. Terri-Lee Seeley: We only have four beds open because we're only funded for four beds. We have the capacity to have more used there, and if people pay, they can come.

I'm not sure what the barriers are. I think one is treating the problem with adolescents and youth as serious, as I said earlier. Also, I don't believe that right now the Ministry for Children and Families is putting any resources anywhere, specifically in addiction. The money we have is federal transfer money into the ministry, from where it comes to us for young women on probation. The barrier's not the referrals; we have a long waiting list. There are many youth out there who want treatment. We, as you say, have a wonderful facility, and the barrier is the money. The system is there.

• 1540

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. White.

I'm sure most of you probably have a lot more to say to us. I apologize for the very short time we have. Certainly, there are lots more issues we could discuss with you. If you have other things you want to tell this committee, you are encouraged to communicate with us. We'll leave a couple of cards. Lee has the e-mail address and the mailing address. You're more than welcome to get in touch with us. There is a website through Parliament, and you can communicate with any of us through Randy, I'm sure. You must know where his office is. We encourage you and thank you for your good work, your passion, your ideas, and for contributing to this debate. Thank you very much.

Maybe we'll suspend for a minute and ask the next group of witnesses to come forward.

Thank you and good luck.

• 1541

• 1543

The Chair: I'll call this meeting back to order.

You heard me say earlier that we are the special committee of the House of Commons. We're studying the issues related to non-medical use of drugs.

Our next witnesses are, from the Abbotsford Downtown Business Area, Mary Reeves, the executive director; from the Abbotsford School Board District, Joanne Field, who is the vice-chair; as an individual we have Marcyne Heinrichs; from the City of Abbotsford—a beautiful city you have, your worship—His Worship George Ferguson, the mayor; and from Abbotsford Police Victims Services, Delaine Milette.

As you heard me say to the other witnesses, at five minutes I'll give you the five, and then I'll do the wrap-up.

Ms. Reeves.

Ms. Mary Reeves (Executive Director, Abbotsford Downtown Business Area): Thank you, Madam Chair and committee.

The Abbotsford Downtown Business Association, or ADBA, represents 250 businesses and 175 property owners.

Addictions are of epidemic proportions, and not one of the board members of the ADBA is immune to the effects of it on their families, as well as their businesses. Therefore, there has been much discussion and investigation into how to approach the problem. The ADBA has taken a position to oppose harm reduction in the form of needle exchanges, or NEPs, safe injection sites, and free drugs, and rather to lobby different levels of government for funding for detox and treatment. We also sponsor educational events. I'll try to address the devastating effect that addictions, and even the current solutions, have had on our business area.

• 1545

The old downtown now houses the majority of the town's liquor establishments, along with most of the social services, topographically sitting at the end of the main thoroughfare from the big federal prison. As it is the older part of town, the rents are lower, both residentially and commercially. Illegal drugs are as available in the downtown as the legal ones, like alcohol. The difficulty I see is that not all alcoholics are drug addicts, but most addicts also have a problem with alcohol. So now we have a compounded problem. The current methadone clinic and the previous NEP, and also the underground NEP that's now operating, have caused serious economic problems for the downtown in reduced business and, in some cases, actual business closures. Without these tax dollars, none of the programs and solutions that are publicly funded will come to fruition.

Addictions create many victims other than just the addict, such as families, friends, business, and the public in general. Solutions should address all addictions, while keeping in mind that creating other victims is not a solution. In the past several years we've had an increase of prostitution from 5 to 37 in the downtown.

The harm reduction model is a misnomer, as prevention, education, detox, and treatment are harm reduction, but address other victims as well, rather than just the addict. If any of the so-called harm reduction models were to be adopted, location would be paramount in the decision, and they should be located in either a hospital or a prison. Services that are designed to help recovering addicts should also be somewhat isolated and not adjacent to their old lifestyles. If I have an allergy to ice cream that would kill me, it is unlikely that I'd a spend a large amount of time in a Dairy Queen.

I've spent a fair amount of time researching the harm reduction models by way of studies, Internet, media reports, and personal interviews with police, corrections personnel, doctors, addicts, and families. I personally visited all three NEPs in the lower mainland, that is, Vancouver, Surrey, and Chilliwack. In these areas I spoke to adjacent businesses, residents, addicts.

Even the addicts asked the question, do I look as if I need another needle?. A clean needle can kill just the same as a dirty one. Most IDUs still use the medical system for a multitude of conditions that relate to drug use, aside from HIV. Harm reduction takes the position that the addict is responsible and will not share needles when given a new one, but many have confessed to still sharing their needles. IDUs have one main goal, how to get their next fix; responsibility does not play a role.

The businesses, by and large, said, don't let them put one in Abbotsford, because from there it's a downward spiral. The NEP environment develops a need for safe site injections, and then free drugs. There is pressure to remove enforcement of arrest of drug dealers who actively sell to the NEP adherents, otherwise the adherents would not use the service. This is an absolute deterrent for viable customers of existing businesses, because of the increase in needles lying around and the offensive behaviour of the adherents of the NEP. That's creating a slum area.

The main proponents for the harm reduction models are coming from the service providers. These are also the same people who provide data for the studies and reports. We would not expect them to supply information that would destroy their funding sources. Reliable data are very hard to acquire from either the addicts or the providers.

Methadone programs inside a recognized and accountable treatment program that has the goal of getting the addict off the drugs is the only acceptable use of this public money. To have this program administered in the middle of a business district that is trying to stay economically viable is ludicrous. I've been informed by the organization that runs this program that it's not only the low-income people who use this service, but there are a number of very wealthy clients who receive the free drug on this program. Why is this happening, when the taxpaying sick cannot even secure their medical treatments? Can these people not afford to pay for their own drugs?

Reports coming out of Sweden, which I understand has zero tolerance, in recent months have been very positive as to the reduction of drug addictions. Many addicts lack the motivation to move to change and a healthy lifestyle. Sweden seems to have found some answers to that. If something is working somewhere else, why should we reinvent the wheel?

Studies can be designed to say anything you want. The reality is what you see when you go down to the places where the harm reduction models are in place. Our drug strategies, which already lean towards these models, are not working, because we have more people now than ever before who are addicted. Marijuana is a gateway drug, according to many an addict.

In the past few years prevention, education, detox facilities, and treatment centres have continued to receive less money and these services are closing down, but the harm reduction method dollars continue to increase. When you try to stand a table on one broken leg, it will topple, but in the process of going down, it will do a lot of damage. We would suggest that this committee look at working together with the provincial and municipal governments to affect change. Treatment costs reduce the enforcement costs.

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How can the government fight addiction when they count on public service providers for their information and organized crime has already bought its way in through judges, police, bureaucrats, and politicians? In light of that question, zero tolerance, education, detox, and treatment is looking very good.

The Chair: Thank you.

Now, from the Abbotsford School Board District, Joanne Field.

Ms. Joanne Field (Vice-Chair, Abbotsford School Board District): Hello. My name is Joanne Field. I'm the vice-chair of the Abbotsford School Board. With me today is the principal of W.J. Mouat, one of our larger secondary schools here in Abbotsford. In Abbotsford public schools alone we represent more than 19,000 students. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

Much like the committee, we are keenly aware of the urgent need to address the serious problem we are facing, the increasing use of drugs by our young people today. To begin with, we would like to speak to what we consider to be the first and the best line of defence, prevention through education. For many a young person who may experiment with drugs there are family problems, self-esteem, peer pressure, a lack of direction or hope, or the “it won't happen to me” attitude. We may not be able to fix all their problems, but we can give them the message that drugs are not the answer and confront them with a consistent and strong message of the dangers and realities of drugs. The key word here is consistent. On the one hand, we are trying to tell young people the dangers of marijuana, and on the other hand, we have discussions about legalizing marijuana. Is this not a mixed message?

Statistics from the Abbotsford Youth Commission survey done in Abbotsford public secondary schools in 1998 showed us that 36% of students surveyed smoke, 57% drink alcohol, 32% smoke marijuana, and 22% use drugs. I find it very disturbing, but at the same time interesting, to note that 21% more of our students are drinking alcohol than smoking. I think that might be due in part to the fact that there have been both national and provincial campaigns against smoking and the dangers associated with it. Smoking is quickly becoming socially unacceptable. Unfortunately, alcohol has not been challenged in the same way. There is work that needs to be done in convincing our youth of the dangers of alcohol. The difficulty is that drinking is a socially accepted activity, and I think it is reflected in the statistics: 57% of our underage youth are drinking alcohol.

I'm going to ask Des, as he's got some statistics here from—what is it?

Mr. Des McKay (Principal, W.J. Mouat Secondary School): Road sense. Our kids go to conferences that are put on by ICBC's road sense program. They've done some surveys, and according to their statistics, more than 38% of all drivers who were injured and 33% of all drivers who were killed in 1998 died because of drinking and driving, and they were between the ages of 13 and 25. It's also interesting to note that 55% of all passengers injured and more than 50% of all passengers killed while in a vehicle driven by someone who had been drinking were between the ages of 13 and 25. Again, they only represent 14% of our population.

Ms. Joanne Field: It's also interesting to note that we have 32% of our students who smoke marijuana, but only 22% say they use drugs. Do 10% of those students not consider marijuana a drug? Is alcohol not a drug? Even the fact that they were separated into two different questions might say something.

The Abbotsford School Board is philosophically opposed to harm reduction strategies. Why? Because we believe they don't work. It sounds good at first glance, harm reduction, but it doesn't work. We have made our schools smoke-free zones, and we do not have smoke holes at our schools. We believe it is a mixed message to, on one hand, say smoking is bad, and on the other hand, provide a so-called safe place to smoke. When it comes to other drugs, our position is the same. The Abbotsford School Board is on record as unanimously opposing so-called safe injection sites, for the same reasons. The very name is a misnomer. What can be safe about helping someone to safely inject poison into his or her body?

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To close, what we need to do is direct our efforts and dollars into preventing young people from getting to this point in the first place, by having a comprehensive national campaign, not only against smoking, but against drinking and all other drugs. As I said before, we believe prevention is the first line of defence.

If I may, I would at this point put a plug in for the Odd Squad and the films they have, Flipping the World and Drugs Through a Blue Lens. I believe both of those are excellent educational tools. I'd like to see that type of educational tool available to all of our schools.

The Chair: You have 45 seconds left.

Mr. Des McKay: I'm not going to be able to give much of an educational perspective in 45 seconds, other than that as an educational institution dealing with young people on a daily basis, we're seeing an increased use of drugs and an increase in the acceptance of use of drugs at all social functions. We believe very strongly that harm reduction is a result of systems that have failed, rather than systems that have provided alternative good education. I'd be happy to answer some questions on that later.

The Chair: I'm sure we'll have a question about what you are doing in your schools.

Now, as an individual, Ms. Marcyne Heinrichs.

Ms. Marcyne Heinrichs (Individual Presentation): Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity.

I am a mom, I am not a professional, and thankfully, there are no drug problems in my family so far. I'm not even sure how I got involved in this, except that I started hearing about harm reduction and it didn't make sense to me. Since it didn't make sense, I decided to find out more about it. I found out that what is really being pushed is free needles and “safe” injection sites for IV drug users in an apparent effort to reduce disease and needles litter. I'm your average Canadian who wants health and safety for our kids, but I thought, is this the best we can do? This is pathetic. These are human beings. What are we doing giving them more needles and a special shoot-up lounge so they can inject again?

Since this didn't make sense either, I decided to talk to people who are involved with drugs. I visited needle exchanges, a prison, talked with prison workers, police, social workers, addicts, and people who work with addicts. I found out that addicts aren't the people who want more needles and places to shoot up. I talked to a treatment centre with an 80% success rate. I asked them what they thought of free needles. They want nothing to do with them. They give lots of support to the addicts, and they go cold turkey. I listened to a former addict from that treatment centre who said he had tried every treatment centre in the country at a cost of $80,000 to taxpayers, and this is the only program that works.

I dug into studies and research on drug addiction. I learned that harm reduction is actually a myth. It is a masked message and a mixed message, aimed at taxpayers as well as users. If it's not the addicts who want these programs or those who treat them, who is it? Who is behind it? Who is going to fund it, we the taxpayers? The government is considering something I don't think is right. How do you know this will work? What is your evidence? Have you tried everything else?

What do I want? First, here's what I don't want. As a Canadian parent and taxpayer, I don't want my money spent on somebody's experiment. I don't want to see addicts subjected to trial and terror. I do not want it to become easier for our good kids to get into drugs. My children aren't users, and I don't want their children to be either. Why would I want my grandchildren to grow up knowing they can get free needles, plus a special place to shoot up in town? This would be an open invitation to get started. It would be harm creation. What kind of sense does it make for them to grow up in a culture where drug use is funded by their government and their own taxes? I don't want IDUs to be enabled in their habits. Prolonging the agony of addiction with needle giveaways and shooting galleries doesn't deal with harm, it deals in drugs. It will only increase the great financial and social burdens already on our community. That is harm expansion, not harm reduction.

I do want detox and rehabilitation. If our kids had a friend on drugs, I would want them to be able to get help. As it is, our addicts are having to get on waiting lists to get into detox, sometimes a week long. That is about the worse thing for an addict to hear. We need to put our tax dollars where they will do some good, into detox and treatment centres. This will save lives and money, and I need to see that our government has tried that.

I want drug courts and mandatory treatment. I want drug education for our students. Give us harm prevention, not expansion. I want drug education that doesn't teach our kids how to be “safe”, but how to stay away from drugs all together.

• 1600

I have seen anti-smoking commercials on TV that provoke some pretty serious thought, sickening images of throat and lung cancer victims. Now we see commercials suggesting arsenic light and extra mild cyanide, and these are messages from the Government of Canada. The implication is that there is no safe cigarette and there is no place for you in our society if you use this type of drug. Okay, extra mild cocaine, heroin light—it's ludicrous. So if there's no place for the nicotine-addicted, why should there be a special place for the drug-addicted? Why would the Government of Canada create a place in our society for drug users by building shoot-up galleries, complete with clean needles, when they are spending millions telling us not to smoke? Talk about a mixed message. There is no safe cigarette, but drugs can be safe. There's no place for smokers, but we will provide safe places to shoot illicit drugs. This is the message from the Government of Canada. If harm reduction is such a good thing and this is about disease, why not provide free filter cigarettes and safe light-up sites? We might save a few people from cancer. I find it very confusing.

Which message from our government are we to believe? I want powerful, clear, anti-drug commercials. We can send a clear, sensible message. We can deal with harm and we can prevent harm, not just reduce it. We can spend our tax dollars on education and rehab and reap the benefits of safer communities at the same time. Will you do that?

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Heinrichs.

And now, His Worship, Mayor Ferguson.

Mr. George Ferguson (Mayor of Abbotsford): Thank you. It is a pleasure to have you people come to our community to try to solve a problem. And of course, the problem is universal, it's not just in Abbotsford.

Abbotsford is the fifth largest city in the province of British Columbia. Abbotsford used to be known as the Bible belt at one time. We had more churches in town than we had gas stations, and it was a great community to be part of. But we brought the Matsqui Institution to town, and that, obviously, was a decision made by the government of the day. It came in as a ladies' drug centre originally, and then it was transformed into the Matsqui Institution.

That became part of the problem, and as you know and I know, today you can do more drug dealing inside the penitentiaries than you can anywhere else. That's no secret to anybody, and yet we don't seem able to control it there. So how do we figure we're going to be able to control it out on the street by making needles more available to people? It was interesting to listen to the young ladies here today who were in favour of the needle situation, because they were lucky enough, they thought, to have clean needles available to them, so they didn't pick up some of the diseases that go along with the drug situation. Well, they were lucky, I guess, and good for them.

I don't think that's the solution to the problem. We have to start with the education, and we have to start with the younger children in our school systems, not at the high school, at that level it's too late. We have to get to the younger people in our educational system and make sure they understand what the harms are. We just heard the lady talking about our cigarettes and how we go about telling people today about the dangers of smoking cigarettes and that. Well, we could show evidence to young people, and I'm talking about people who are seven, eight, nine, ten years old, that this is where they're going if they're going to go this drug route.

And for that gentleman here who thinks marijuana isn't addictive to a person, I think he's dreaming. I think it opens the door to the drug scene and beyond that. I can tell you about this youngster from a very well-known family in town here. He started off on marijuana, he moved up the line, and he got into heroin. Just lately he wrote to his mother on her birthday. He's been in the drug problem, in and out of jail, and all the other good things. It was unfortunate, because he was a bright child, a good looking young fellow, and all the rest of it. He wrote to his mother on her birthday and said, I'm involved in heroin, but the problem with heroin is that you don't know what's enough and when it's too much. I'll tell you, he had too much, because he was buried two weeks ago.

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That's the scene you get in this heroin deal. Marijuana sounds simple and not addictive, but it is addictive for most people. If we're going to go that route, we're going to be asking for more trouble. So I say, in today's world, we've got to get education, we've got to get detox centres, and we've got to get beds available. The Peardonville House the young lady was talking about has done a great job out there with a limited number of beds and what they've got to work with. If that institution were able to have four or five times the number of beds and ran the same types of programs, the amount of good that would come out of it would be amazing and turn these people around. You see this young lady here today who was at Peardonville House, and as she said, she was only there for two and a half months. It's worked for her, and I'm sure it's worked for a lot more people.

It's around our schools. We can see it. I can go downtown, I can drive around any one of our schools and see them out there with marijuana cigarettes. It's no mystery, the situation is there. So somewhere somebody has to provide the money to make the corrections that are necessary, and in my mind, detox centres are the route to go.

With the needle exchange situation, we had two success stories here today, but I'm not really sure that's the right route, because all you're doing is giving them a new needle to pour more poison into their system, and that, again, is questionable. I wouldn't suggest it, and I wouldn't suggest it in Abbotsford or in the downtown area. If you're going to do it, then take it out and put it into a clinic or tie it in with a hospital or some other area where you have a different atmosphere.

There's no easy answer to the long-term situation. We're not going to correct it overnight. It didn't happen overnight. It's been going on, we know now, for the last 20 years, and it's getting substantially worse—longer than that in many areas, but in this particular area I would say over the last 20 years it's become very evident. Before that you didn't see it as we see it on the streets today.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mayor Ferguson.

Ms. Milette.

Ms. Delaine Milette (Coordinator, Abbotsford Police Victims Services): Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the committee. I'm thrilled to come here and speak to you today from Abbotsford Police Victims Services on something we feel very passionately about.

We don't often deal with people who are drug addicts coming into our office. The people we deal with are the children of drug addicts who come into our office, children of people who are selling drugs and children of people who are growing drugs, and we're very concerned about that particular victim of the drug trade. It's a very small area compared to what's been spoken about here today, but I believe those children are very important and that we must address what their needs are.

We often are involved with calls that are drug-related, and those go anywhere from suicide attempts to family disputes to drug busts that have occurred, where the kids have been brought into our office. We feel that action needs to be taken because of the risks to those children.

First, we see cases where children are getting in the crossfire of drug disputes, where there's gang retaliation because of things their parents have done or not done. Here in Abbotsford a couple of weeks ago a young fellow was in his home when a van emptied out and seven thugs came and broke every window of the house as a warning to the parents. The kid is the one who is afraid, traumatized, and getting hurt.

We see hydro shut off in the homes after a drug bust, so there's no electricity, no power, nothing to cook food with for a number of weeks, and children are being raised in that environment.

We see an unhealthy atmosphere that kids are being raised in, because when you have a drug house, you have a lot of water being pumped through the system, a lot of electricity and heat. This causes an increase of spores and fungus in the air that leads to respiratory problems of children who are living in that environment, and it's not acceptable. Drug paraphernalia are left out. There are drugs in that environment that the children can get hold of.

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One of the problems we see as particularly bad is the live wires that are strung around the house in order to feed the lamps and keep the heating going for growing the drugs. Sometimes these live wires have been strung across bedroom doors of little kids' rooms, where, if they woke up in the middle of the night with a bad nightmare and wanted to go see mom and dad, there's a danger of their getting burned or even hurt.

The chemicals that are in the home, certainly when you look at crystal meth labs and things like that, are highly explosive and flammable. Indeed, we see a lot of the time fires starting in homes where there are drug operations. It's not acceptable that kids in this environment are just handed back to go into this environment over and over again.

We see children who are confused and traumatized by the fact that the police have raided their home. This adds to a fear of police, and since they love their mom and dad and don't understand why this is happening to their mom and dad, there is not only a fear of the police, but an acceptance, a wanting to accept and embrace their parents as being right and good and what they're doing as being right and good.

I don't know that we even want to interfere with that, so we don't try to. But it doesn't bode well for their adherence to law in the future. All it leads to is their embracing a criminal lifestyle. We see them not understanding when their parents are handcuffed or booked, not knowing what's going on when their parents are taken to jail, not understanding why parents are taken to jail.

We see parents who recruit their children to work with them in the drug trade, as they go into the shopping centres and they're using their little kids as lookouts, and that's the start of it and it increases from there. We see kids getting involved in criminal activities in the future, heavy theft and that, to support the drug addictions of their family or their own drug addictions. We see the drug addictions becoming generational, as the kids are brought up in that environment. We see the impact of the criminal lifestyle just in the people they're rubbing shoulders with, the people who come into the house, the attitudes that are shown in that kind of situation. It's a situation that traps them into that lifestyle.

I also am concerned personally about a couple of cases where I've seen people right off the boat being taken into doing growing operations. For most of the cases, I would say kids who come into the area who've been involved in growing operations and come to us through the police are very well behaved. Most of the parents, I would say, are quite good parents, because their kids are very polite, they're very good, they don't act up. This is my experience, maybe not everybody's in all victims services. We see some kids too whose parents come in from another country, and right away they're taken into a drug trade, and some of these people are kept at slavery levels almost, where they're put into a home, they provide this growing operation for somebody else, and they're actually living in the deepest poverty. I'm concerned that many people who are not making money off the drugs are living in poverty because of the drugs.

I don't think we can allow our children to be brought up in the atmosphere of growing operations in homes with drug abusive parents. It's wrong to let kids grow up accepting a criminal lifestyle as the normal way of life, the acceptable way of life, and then punish them once they're adults for living in accordance with that norm, either by becoming criminals themselves or by becoming addicts themselves and slaves to that norm. Options must be found to protect these kids, to allow them to grow up in an environment where they can live and build self-esteem and healthy choices for themselves.

Speaking only personally, not for the Abbotsford Police Victims Services, I can see where we should be considering taking kids from that lifestyle and putting them in other homes until the parents have moved out of that lifestyle and can raise their kids outside a criminal lifestyle.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Milette, and thank you to all the witnesses.

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You should know, before we go into the questions and answers, that this committee has not taken a position on any issue. A lot of people have told us they're against harm reduction, or what they thought harm reduction meant, or safe injection sites. We haven't taken any position. So just be clear about that.

I'll turn first to Mr. White for some questions.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Thank you all for coming. I know everybody here. I guess you would agree that it's a different community. I came here in 1981, and it is a different community, there's no question about that, from then. To hear that there are now approximately 37 prostitutes in the community—

Ms. Mary Reeves: Actually, I believe it's 40.

Mr. Randy White: —40 prostitutes in the community, who are not criminals, in my mind, but victims of a terrible drug trade... It may interest you to know that I very recently spoke to a young addict in a recovery centre who is a graduate from one of our schools, and if you look back in one of the yearbooks—I won't identify which school or who it was—he was voted most likely to succeed. He told me that. It's quite a strange turn of events for a person that successful.

I want to ask a question about the educational aspect of it. I wonder, Joanne, if you could tell me whether or not the school system allows the teachers to bring people into classrooms for instruction, someone like Jamie, who's probably a bit of a miracle in our own time, or any other person who's come from heroin addiction, come through it, who can influence kids. We've heard on this trip a number of times where kids have said, yeah, yeah, but the teachers, you know, they haven't been through this; they just give us what's in the book, and we don't buy into that. But they did seem to want to hear from younger people who have been through it. Is that allowed in the schools?

Ms. Joanne Field: Yes, it is allowed, although we want to be sure it's going to be handled in a fashion that is appropriate for classroom discussion. I do know that Des had the Odd Squad come into his school, and two police officers who work on the east side of Vancouver come and have spoken to students about raves. Actually, when the Odd Squad came to Abbotsford, they could have come into the schools, but there would have been an extra class. The fact remains that they didn't come into the schools, because we didn't have the extra money to bring them in.

Personally, I don't know the people you mentioned, but people like Randy Miller are classic examples. I think they would be very appropriate to come to the schools. We ask anybody who comes into the schools to make sure they're going to handle themselves properly for the classroom environment, but there's nothing that stops it.

Mr. Randy White: But Randy, I think, is around 40. We've been talking to—

Ms. Joanne Field: Younger ones.

Mr. Randy White: —14- and 15-year-olds, and some of them have picked up heroin in grade six, in elementary school, grade seven, grade eight, and they're in recovery houses. I think it would be a wise thing to start at a earlier age bringing them into the classroom, so that they can relate.

Ms. Joanne Field: Absolutely. And there would be nothing that would stop anyone. I don't mean anyone, but obviously, if we knew what the person's message was going to be and that they were going to handle themselves accordingly, there would be no problem. I would certainly support that, and I know other board members would too. That, to me, is important, because, as you say, if somebody's been there, there's nothing like a personal compelling story to affect the young person.

Mr. Randy White: The other question I have, Madam Chairman, is this. Municipalities say, well, yeah, we should have detox and we should have rehabilitation. George, I think, said that. We hear that right across the country. The provincial governments say, yes, that's what you need, and the federal government says, yes, that's what we need. But the question is money, how important it is, how expensive it is. I wonder, George, would you think a one-third kind of proposition is reasonable? Who do you think has the onus to provide the rehabilitation and the many millions, if not billions, of dollars to get it consistent across the country?

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Mr. George Ferguson: I've always been a very strong believer in the infrastructure program, because I think it has a bearing at home and there's a benefit at home. The provincial government and federal government have other means of raising tax dollars than we have at the municipal level. We only have the land tax, that's our base. It was never really supposed to be applied for all the different social functions in a community, but it was to look after the basic requirements of fire protection, roads, and those things.

I think it's going to take a lot of people working together to try to solve this problem. I think the taxpayers wouldn't mind if the line on the bottom of the tax notice said, x number of dollars or a percentage is going for this particular program, which has funding help from the federal and provincial governments. I think that's the avenue.

Randy, as you know, we talk about dikes. It used to be the federal and provincial governments put up the capital works, and we did the maintenance work. We've all come to realize that it doesn't work that way any more. People with a stake are going to be more involved, and it's going to be done more properly if they're putting money into it, along with the federal and provincial governments, because you have to keep them straight.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you.

Mr. George Ferguson: The bigger problem I think we have with marijuana is our justice system. They pick up the marijuana growers. We've got lots of them, that lady from the police department would tell you that. I think on the one main street in Abbotsford today you could find a marijuana grower of some size; maybe it's only five plants or maybe it's 100 plants or greater, all kinds of them. The problem is that the police pick them up, take them to the courts, and before the night is out, the same people are back on the street, and they've got another growing operation going. That goes on and on and on. And you wonder why the police sometimes get fed up with these things—there doesn't seem to be any chance of the justice system stopping it.

Mr. Randy White: I have one fellow with 96 convictions on that sort of thing in trafficking. We have to work at that.

The Chair: Thank you Mr. White.

Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you Madam Chairman. Thank you, all of you, for taking the time. We apologize for the lateness, but it's such an interesting subject that we started very early this morning and have picked up a cumulative delay. Thank you for being patient.

Mr. Mayor, thank you for taking the time to come and see us this afternoon. You have a long and distinguished record of public service. Your participation here is appreciated. So thank you very much.

Randy, maybe we could learn something from the mayor. He said the federal and provincial governments have other ways to raise taxes. We also have elections that come up, so that sets the tone for tax raising, but if you'd like to discreetly give us some advice after, maybe...

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: You've been elected many times. Maybe we could learn something from you.

Mr. George Ferguson: I'd be glad to do that.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: In all seriousness, Mr. Mayor, to take up Randy's point on the infrastructure program, I think it's a fantastic program. It does great things in communities, big and small, all across the country. It shows a great partnership between the three levels of government, which we should try to expand wherever we can.

Has your municipal council looked at the idea of some of these harm reduction approaches? The term harm reduction means different things to different people, so let's be very specific. Let's say, for example, there is consensus that we need more resources in detox, in prevention, in education in schools. The idea of having somebody like Jamie speak to students is a brilliant idea. There are all kinds of great things that can be done. But what if the government were to say, look, as part of a national strategy, we're going to look at needle exchange programs on the road to rehabilitation and recovery, not, in and of itself, as a solution? Nobody is advocating that as an end in itself. Would your municipal council accept that somewhere in your city there should be, for example, a needle exchange as part of a larger process of rehabilitation?

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Mr. George Ferguson: I can't speak for the council, because we haven't dealt with it as a council issue. We had some discussion the other day, and a couple of our councillors are going to a seminar that's going to be held a little later on next year on that. We were talking about needle exchange. The one councillor was saying, I was totally opposed to it at one stage, but I'm kind of turning the other way. The other councillor was saying, I'm in exactly the opposite situation. We haven't got a defined position as a council on the subject. There are two sides to the argument, and we hear the argument regularly.

At this point, from my own personal viewpoint, I would not be interested in going that route. I'd be more interested in putting funding into the infrastructure, detox centres, and what have you, trying to do something with prevention up front, part of an educational program.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Okay. I appreciate that too, but one doesn't exclude the other necessarily.

Mr. George Ferguson: I realize that, but I'm not convinced that supplying free needles is a solution.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

My question is to the school board officials. One of our stops along the way has been to an alcohol and drug prevention society, and they showed us the curriculum for schools in this province. In grades six and seven you have certain outcomes, and you have certain manuals or resources materials that are available to schools and teachers, and what have you. This association was telling us that they're in danger of going broke, as they sell their materials to the various school boards, but it's a requirement that grade six and seven kids go through a program that teaches them about prevention. So I was a bit surprised that you didn't tell us about what you are doing, but perhaps this is an opportunity. I'm a bit surprised, because pretty well every kid we've met and every young person we've met has not been subject to such a program. So I'm wondering, if the ministry is saying there is a program, why most of the kids who are addicts didn't see anything until they were grade 10, if they saw anything, and by then it was too late.

I'm 38 years old. It's a long time ago, but when I was 10, I had friends who did drugs. I didn't, but that's...

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Turning 39 soon.

The Chair: I'm 39 soon—for the first time.

We met a recovered drug addict who, though it's hard to tell, I think was probably about 50. He grew up in a town in the Fraser Valley just like this. At 13 he was hooked on heroin. Some 40 years ago this guy was hooked on heroin. So I'm trying to figure out what's happening in respect of prevention and what is going on with education. I know a little bit about what's happening in my province, but I don't know what's happening in B.C.

Ms. Joanne Field: I was just going to say that my son is in grade 10 right now.

The Chair: And he has a program in life skills in there?

Ms. Joanne Field: When he was in grade seven, he did come home and talk about smoking and alcohol.

The Chair: Nothing on other drugs?

Ms. Joanne Field: I didn't really hear too much about that. He was monitoring how much alcohol his dad was drinking, so that's how I knew. There was an awareness there.

The point I was trying to make when I was talking about the smoking part of it is that obviously, it's got to be in the schools. As you're saying, there are people saying there are programs, but you hear about lots of kids who haven't heard of the programs, so it's very inconsistent as to what is happening.

But I think the message, as it relates to drugs and alcohol specifically, has to be... Marcyne referred to the smoking ads that have so much impact, where they're put in at key times when young people watch TV. I just think they almost have to be inundated with it for it to get through to them, because you're fighting this whole culture thing.

Des, I'm sure, has some comments, because he works with it every day.

Mr. Des McKay: Actually, Madam Chair, there are two responses to that. One of them is that the B.C. Ministry of Education introduced what they call a career and personal planning curriculum about seven years ago. One of the strands in that curriculum is personal development, and within the personal development they most clearly go through drugs, alcohol, addiction, and so on.

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In our district, very specifically, we struck a committee made up of doctors, nurses, educators, and business leaders in the community. We developed our own curriculum to resource the career and personal planning curriculum. It was called “For Your Information”, and it deals very specifically with substance abuse and alcohol abuse, as well as all the sexual issues. That curriculum runs from kindergarten right on through to grade 12.

So we are doing those things, we are being proactive within our schools. However, are we being effective? One of my concerns is that I don't think we're collecting good data. I'm not sure the surveys that are being developed are being coordinated with the programs we've got to assess whether or not what we're doing is having an impact on the kids and their development or their use or abuse of drugs.

I think the other part of the problem comes back to what you were talking about with long-term programs. We're not seeing a coordinating of funding or a coordination of communication in data and information amongst the services. I sat in a meeting here just two mornings ago with a young man—I will just refer to him as John—who admitted that he is an addict, he has been an addict for six years. At 15 years of age, he desperately wants help. I couldn't get all the coordinating agencies to sit there. I couldn't get them to agree on what information or services had been provided for John up to this point. And the saddest part of it all is that at the end of the meeting we really hadn't resolved anything for John. I have kept him in the school, and I am working with him through our resource team. So as a school—and my school is not unlike most other high schools—we put together a care team, for want of another name. We are now trying, ad hoc, to put together programs for John.

So on the prevention side, we are educating, but I think on the treatment side we're waiting. Instead of treating it early, we're waiting until there's a crisis, and then we're coming in with band-aid approaches that for this young man aren't working.

The Chair: I think you've highlighted that there have to be a number of different approaches for different stages of people's lives. But, Mr. McKay, if for seven years you've had this program going in your school board, why has Ms. Field's son only seen it once?

Ms. Joanne Field: I'm not saying only once, I'm just saying that was one time I remember its being highlighted.

Mr. Des McKay: I know Mrs. Field's son, he attends my school.

Ms. Joanne Field: He is not John.

Mr. Des McKay: He has seen it more than once.

The Chair: Okay. Maybe that's something all of us, as parts of our community, whether it's the city council, individuals, the business community, or victims services... There needs to be a broader approach right across our communities to try to aid healthy living. I'm certain the MP would be very interested in that. Right, Randy?

Thank you very much. Again I apologize that our time is so short. It's not just that we were running a little late through the day, but also that we've accommodated a lot more people than we planned on and than we usually have. We are very appreciative of all of you giving your time and energy to this issue.

You may not have told us everything you want to tell us. For anyone who did enter the room since I said it the last three times, we will make available the website and a card for our clerk. Anything can be sent to the clerk. You can send it to each of us as individuals free of charge if you put it in the mail, and we're all on e-mail. You're very welcome and encouraged to give us the benefit of your ideas. If you don't want your name associated with it, that's fine, you can send it to us anonymously, you can send it to us with your name and ask us to cut it off, whatever, for circulation. We're very happy to have people's ideas and contributions. No one has a silver bullet, and we're looking for some provocative and other ideas.

Thank you very much again, and you're welcome to take your name tags home.

Mr. Randy White: I have a comment, Madam Chairman, for those who may have come in late. This is being broadcast live to Ottawa. There are MPs listening to this as they sit down, and perhaps our colleagues on this committee. That's what all of this is about. It's also being recorded and will be used when we go back to Ottawa and try to sift through the mountain of information we've received.

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The Chair: Yes, all of your testimony is part of the official record. So thank you very much again.

I'm just suspending for one minute so that this group can leave and the next group can sit down very quickly.

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The Chair: I'll call this meeting back to order.

As I've said far too many times, we are the Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs. We are a House of Commons committee, as Randy mentioned. For everyone's benefit, this meeting is being recorded in both official languages. If anyone has difficulty hearing, there are hearing sets, or if you want to listen in the other official language, you're more than welcome to do that.

By way of a preliminary comment, we have not come to any conclusions on this committee. There may be lots of people talking about different ideas. We have not adopted any of those or any position, so we look forward to the benefit of your ideas.

From the Full Circle Life Recovery Strategy we have the director, Andy Rowe, and from Wagner Hills Farm the executive director, Helmut Boehm. As an individual and also as an Abbotsford youth probation officer—you'll have to tell us which voice you're speaking with—we have Barry Neufeld. From the National Training Centre for Self-Protection and Functional Fitness we have John Parker, and from the Abbotsford Addiction Centre Charlaine Avery, who's the clinical director. As an individual we have Les Talvio. Thank you.

You have five minutes to start, and I'll give you the five, and then I'll wrap you at the one.

Mr. Rowe.

Mr. Andy Rowe (Director, Full Circle Life Recovery Strategy): We said we didn't come to any agreements. I think we've come to one agreement, at least in this community: we're fighting the biggest terrorism attack in this community you can have. It's the most devastating thing to our community and our nation. It's not airplanes flying into buildings, but people are dying a lot more around the world. Russians kill themselves with vodka, there are a million and a half addicts of heroin in Pakistan who live their life smoking on opium pipes.

In this community, we just made a video tape with Full Circle, which is going into the prisons and recovery centres. This is a kick-off of Behind the Blinds in Abbotsford, and we are going to pull the blinds in Abbotsford, we're going to talk about what's really going on, like the crack cocaine laboratory with 40 employees on Townline Road, with a 12-year-old trapped in there. I got a call from her older sister, who had a gun put to her head, and she had to run to Hamilton, Ontario. She phoned Crime Stoppers, she phoned the Abbotsford police crying, pleading to get her brother out of there. He was trapped in there making crack cocaine.

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The crack cocaine is being made there, and it's being delivered by cellphone in BMWs and IROCs, from Kelowna—run by one of the Hell's Angels there, who does the muscle work—all the way to Surrey now. So Abbotsford is becoming the hub for crime—they're not gangs, they're business people. The addicts steal from one store, and sell out of open businesses, people who we think are business people. I work the streets of Abbotsford. I'm a court advocate for the addicts. It seems the addicts look bad, so they get more time than the dealer who is not addicted, but is driving the BMW. It makes me angry that they're living off the blood of my children.

To tell you who I am, I've served in 16 institutions across the nation, and I've dealt drugs from the east coast to the west coast. I was a delinquent in this town for many years. I was a deficit to this town. I was highly addicted, I've overdosed three times. I've served 11 years in 16 different institutions. I now facilitate 16 different behaviour management courses. I studied psychology and went on to get a business degree, but my heart couldn't watch any more, so I came back to this, rather than go after the almighty buck. Behind the Blinds was kicked off today in Abbotsford. You can talk to me about it. I'm going to the schools, because bullying is a big part of it, but the bottom line is we need to ask the police the tough questions.

Two weeks ago I shut down a drug lab on Gladys. It's been there for six years. They lifted the house up on stilts and dug underneath Gladys, which is a main street. They lifted the house up, and between the hours of midnight and 6 they dug it out and put a full-grown high-tech marijuana growing operation in there. For some reason, there was no cooperation, so through a friend of mine on the force, we closed it down ourselves.

I'm concerned with a couple of other places in Abbotsford, but I'm really concerned with this organization. What they do is, during the day you have the different cellphone numbers, which I can give you, and you phone, and anywhere in Abbotsford they have districts where they deliver. These are all just kids, employees with fast cars—megabucks. Where do we get the money to open a detox? Take it from the drug dealers, they've got plenty of it. They deliver to the kids at the schools, and instead of an older guy like me delivering to the schools, they give a kid a car and the big bucks. You can go over to a drive-through across the road at Matsqui Rec Centre after 6 o'clock any night, and what will happen when you dial the cellphone number is that you drive through there and there are two kids standing there who will give you the drugs. That's only one corner in Abbotsford. It's on every single corner. My concern is my children coming up. I can't change my path, but I can help them with the future. It's up to us to give them a future.

As for safe injection houses, you're crazy to even consider them. Not in my town, because that's where I started. When I was 13, I was addicted to methamphetamine. The only reason was that I walked into a shooting gallery. You call them safe houses, harm reduction—whatever you think it is, it's not. It's poison. When our children have a bad day or are getting bullied or aren't getting along with mom and dad, we need to give them positive reinforcement. We don't want drug dealers on every corner, so they can go and get a quick fix of heroin. We're talking about legalizing heroin and methadone. They're forcing treatment centres to give out methadone. I, as a former addict, don't want to be addicted to government funded drugs, thank you. I want to be free, and there is freedom from drugs, there is a way.

Randy White said to me one time at a forum that we needed to go to the streets. Well, the streets have come to you.

In Abbotsford—and we can start it in Abbotsford, but it's a national problem—we can stop the drug dealers as a community. We can stand up, we can work with the police, we can ask the tough questions. We can stop them from delivering drugs to our schools and our corners and our prostitutes. We can shut down the businesses that are buying stolen goods and selling them at the storefront to feed the heroin addicts money. A couple of weeks ago Toews Music gave me a call—I get calls like this all the time, because there's nowhere else for them to turn. They lost an expensive piece of equipment that I was able to go to the streets, find, and return to them. Where I found it was in the storefront of another business two blocks from there for sale.

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The Abbotsford police said, Andy, someone is stealing all the kids' bikes, and I hadn't had time to really think about it. I had seen it in the paper and a police officer had asked me, because they had stolen their bikes too. But I had to do something when—and I don't have a lot of money—I went out of my way to get two bikes for my little boys, and they got stolen. So I went down to cocaine alley—for those of you who don't know it, it's just down by the bars that support all this evil—I went in through a front door, and I found 30 kids' bikes. That was my first thought, to go down there and look. I got one of my kids' bikes back and 30 other kids' bikes. My question is: why does that reflect on me?

Drug addiction is a social problem, it's an emotional problem, and it's a spiritual problem. But drug dealers are a police issue.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Rowe.

Mr. Andy Rowe: Thank you.

The Chair: And now we will hear from Helmut Boehm.

Mr. Helmut Boehm (Executive Director, Wagner Hills Farm): “What is truth?”, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate asked after Jesus said, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” That's in John 18:37. Our personal answer to Pilate's question will affect whether we might abuse drugs, and our answer will also affect what we do or what we don't do as policy for people who fall into harmful addictions. In 28 years of serving in the Canadian addictions recovery community I've seen several thousand clients and I've seen changing drug use and addiction patterns, but the core questions for me remain the same: Who am I? Do I matter? What is truth?

It seems to me that the government, by and large, rightly focuses on the rule of law, protection of rights and freedoms, and justice as its core mandate under the Canadian Constitution and under God. However, when government initiates prevention programs that go beyond giving factual information, seeking to instil a certain set of supposedly neutral values into its constituency, as I was privileged to do when I worked for the Alberta government under AADAC for seven years, when government gives away free needles to be used for illicit drug injection, when government gives away free condoms, free methadone, and possibly free heroin and free places to shoot up, I think the government oversteps its mandate and takes on the role of a doting parent, undermining every individual's responsibility to find the answers to the questions: Who am I? Do I matter? What is truth?

At Wagner Hills Farm we're a living demonstration that people do change by choice, do find freedom from harmful addictions, including methadone addiction, do become productive members of society, do go on to help other people find freedom and themselves find trustworthy answers to these questions. During my 20 years at Wagner Hills Farm almost 1,000 clients, hundreds of volunteers, dozens of dedicated staff, have found freedom from harmful addictions by trusting God's truth that they matter and that God heals.

Many are living clean and sober and productive lives. Many are helping others in churches, in 12-step groups, in families, and in the community. Some have died, and some have returned to addiction and remain there today. For these we pray, we build relationships, we communicate love, without giving money or enabling them to continue to hurt themselves, and we visit those who end up in jail. After 28 years I've learned that regardless of the family background, regardless of the abuse issues, regardless of the hurt, the pain, or the damage that's caused, there always remains a person with an intrinsic value, with the ability to ask God, who gives the power to forgive.

Some of the above-mentioned harm reduction strategies undermine a person's choices and their responsibility for these choices, and that's why these policies are so destructive. Government puts itself in the position of a saviour, espousing a belief system. Jesus said one other thing. He said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Is harm reduction how we would like to be treated if we have experienced real freedom? There is much support for harm reduction among those still addicted and others. I see those who come to freedom from addiction at Wagner Hills Farm or other treatment and recovery centres or through 12-step groups. Recovering addicts often express anger or scorn for harm reduction and the role government has played in prolonging their addictions, as you heard Andy say so well.

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It's ironic that Wagner Hills Farm presently faces the loss of the partial funding we get from the provincial government, because of our resistance to the imposition of methadone maintenance at Wagner Hills Farm. We're just in the process of fighting that, and we're being threatened with the loss of funding.

Government can provide tremendous help by firm leadership, wise policies, integrity, functioning within its mandate, and releasing to us all the personal responsibility for our choices. I'm aware that many civil servants, the media, and members of the public are exerting tremendous pressure upon present governments to do something about an apparent epidemic of drug abuse in our country.

Much can be done to encourage treatment, recovery, 12-step programs, detox. Much wisdom is required. Rather than the questionable public policy initiatives of, say, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Sydney, Australia, that we hear about in the newspapers, I would suggest there are better models of government leadership in policies from cities like Cali, Colombia, Almolonga, Guatemala, and in the new Uganda. The northern Canadian communities of Povungnituk, Pond Inlet, Kangigsujuag, and others have experienced remarkable transformations from high suicide and drug abuse to almost none through prayer. These videos of last year and the year before detail these.

Transformation is possible even in Vancouver's downtown east side. Alongside government initiatives, a conference this year identified and encouraged 56 different groups of people serving, most of them without any government assistance, helping people achieve freedom from addictions. Humble prayer, dedicated service, wise, firm leadership, sensible policies within the government mandate, leaving the dignity of personal responsibility to each individual in an environment of caring for the needy, will bring the healing of addictions to our land.

Harm reduction is inexplicably linked to the bio-psycho-social model of human behaviour. This current social science truth sometimes runs counter to Jesus' definitions of truth. By imposing harm reduction strategies, the government goes against our Constitution's freedom of religion stipulations for some Canadians.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Boehm.

Now we have Barry Neufeld, appearing as an individual.

Mr. Barry Neufeld (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I come today wearing three hats. I will speak as an individual, as a man whose family has been deeply affected by substance abuse. I also come as a youth probation officer in this city. I brought along with me the results of some of your federal money. We probation officers run a program called youth substance abuse management. It's run by a probation officer, it's done with federal Young Offender Act funding, and there are four youths who came with me. I don't know if they're still here or not, but they have all grown up under the influence of drugs. They have lost parents, lost family. There would have been more, but they have a very busy schedule of being in and out of jail, so two of them didn't make it today. I also come as a resident and a school trustee in Chilliwack. Chilliwack is a neighbouring community that has a needle exchange program. I work in Abbotsford, which is a community that does not have a needle exchange program. I haven't prepared a speech, so I hope I remember to say everything I wanted to say.

First, I met with the youths at their meeting at 3 o'clock today. I'm always told that I should be harder and tougher on these kids. They will not quit using drugs until they hit bottom. Sometimes I can help them hit bottom by arranging for them to spend a little time in custody. There's a lot of talk about needing more detox facilities. These kids have told me that it's easier to detox in jail, because they can't get out and get drugs. With detox facilities, they can walk across the street and pick up drugs from people who are hanging out right there. Detox facilities only deal with the medical aspects of the addiction, and I've never known them to keep anyone longer than eight days.

Unfortunately, when a youth has finished detox, then the problem is to find a treatment centre that will take them right away. It's rare that I'm able to time it so that when they're ready to go into detox, I have a treatment centre available right away. Furthermore, what's happened many times is illustrated by an article in the newspaper, and I believe you have a copy of it. It concerns a young boy who is under my supervision; three times I've had him sobered up, and three times he's run away; the last time we dealt with him he was nearly dead. He had inserted a dirty needle into his arm, and it had become infected. His stepfather took a knife and poked the wound to drain off the infection, which only caused secondary infection. He had torn away most of the skin from the surface of his face, it was completely raw. The medical people wanted him in twice a day for medical treatment for the infection, but we couldn't get them out of bed, because they had been shooting up the night before. The only way I could save his life was to put him into jail.

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I don't know why the government is so hesitant about using the correctional system to solve the drug problem. I also don't know why the federal government is putting such a token, small amount of money in with young offenders, when that's when the drug problems begin.

Now I'm going to change hats and go to my school board hat.

You heard from the Abbotsford trustee and from the principal that there is a token attempt to teach kids about the dangers of drugs. The RCMP do an excellent job, called DARE, in our community. They come in in grade five, and for 16 weeks they deal with the grade five children, teaching them about drugs, and then they don't come back again. We find that sometimes with kids who have been through this DARE program—it's an excellent program—two years later the effects have worn off and they're using drugs. I would hope that the federal government could find some funding to keep the RCMP coming back for grade five, grade six, grade seven, grade eight, and keep that up. The kids who came with me today told me they went through school and never heard anything about drugs. They could teach a course about cocaine and heroin. The stuff they learn in school is very elementary and insignificant.

Finally, I'm going to speak as a individual. I looked up what the word medical meant in the dictionary, because sometimes we assume things. You are interested in the non-medical use of drugs. The definition of the word medical is “pertaining to the art of healing”. Well, my experience with the medical profession is that they've lost sight of their role to work with healing. There's a lot of drug abuse that is prescribed by doctors. I know kids who come from homes where their parents are on prescription tranquillizers, and yet they don't have normal emotional response. They're growing children that have a lot of emotional needs.

I know from personal experience; I have been divorced for 25 years, and my ex-wife is a pharmacist and totally addicted to crack. She's able to keep functioning in the community in her profession, and yet now I have two adult daughters who are very messed up, having grown up in a situation like that. She's monitoring her own harm reduction, but the effect it's having on the next generation is very devastating.

So I would encourage you, as federal politicians, to consider more funding for early intervention and early prevention, before people get so badly addicted and their lives get so messed up that they've been to jail many times and have overdosed several times, like my colleague Andy Rowe here beside me.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Neufeld.

Mr. Parker.

Mr. John Parker (Director, National Training Centre for Self-Protection and Functional Fitness): Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'd like to just address the paper that was handed to me on the terms of reference. I think we have to start there, because there is a statement made that gives me cause to consider your words that you haven't chosen a direction or a side yet as to harm reduction versus treatment. I think the statement is “the goal to reduce the harm associated with alcohol and other drugs to individuals, families and communities.” This is a critical question, because as soon as we start bringing the term harm reduction into our vocabulary, we start opening doors that really shouldn't be opened, in my opinion. The term we should be using is drug-free society. The reasons for that are quite easy to substantiate when we look at the truth and the facts behind the issues we face.

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I've met and talked with many well-meaning people who are involved in harm reduction. They feel they're doing a good thing by helping to come alongside of addicts who are in dire straits and helping them with their needles, so they have clean needles. The fact is that in Vancouver they gave out 3.2 million needles last year, and they have an HIV infection rate of 20% or 25% and a hepatitis C rate of 80%. It's the highest in the developed world, so I don't see how that's helped anything.

The harm reduction enables drug addicts to continue their addiction, and actually increases the harm to users and non-users. Harm reduction can prolong drug use and increase frequency of use, inducing drug-related health harm. Harm reduction encourages hopelessness, with its basic premise that we must accept the enslavement of some of the population to drugs. Harm reduction promotes drug use. Weakening perceptions of risk of harm in drug use, weakening moral disapproval of drug use, and increasing perceived availability of drugs have resulted in increased rates of use among secondary students. Increased drug dependency and substance abuse problems are also being reported among young people. This was from the Canadian Association of Police.

Limiting the harmful effects of drugs is one important part of the efforts made in drug abuse care on behalf of the persons who have become heavily addicted to drugs, but if a drug strategy is formulated solely in terms of alleviating the situation of those who have already become addicted, the preventive aspect is neglected, and that, indeed, is what I've experienced when I've talked to people who are promoting harm reduction.

I believe it's a Trojan horse. There are hidden soldiers in the harm reduction. This quote is taken from Drug Watch International:

The well-organized and financed international drug legalization movement has made “harm reduction” one of its chief strategies to liberalize drug policies and legalize drugs. International harm reduction conferences are sponsored and funded by the world's top drug legalization groups. One unsuspecting participant labelled this event “a drug legalizer's ball”. For drug use advocates, the term “harm reduction” is a clever public relations ploy for “drug legalization”.

We must learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before us. According to a Nordic Network press release of March 20, 2000, entitled, “The failure of Dutch drug policy”:

It took 25 years to openly criticize our holy policy of tolerance, a policy that didn't succeed in keeping youngsters away from hard drugs, a policy that made it possible for criminal organizations to increase their wealth by billions. It is said the ideologies have disappeared, that they no longer exist, but take a look at the discussion about drug policy and you will certainly get the impression that the facts and figures are apparently less important than ideology.

The term harm reduction is a broad and undefined statement. Upon honest examination, it is clear that anything promoting recovery belongs under the treatment pillar, along with prevention and enforcement. Therefore, harm reduction, without the disguise of treatment, in its true light, is harm promotion.

I implore this committee to take a hard and honest look at the facts, to avoid becoming entangled in the maze of ideologies, many of which are not supported by fact or truth. If we are to instil hope for the future, we must eliminate harm reduction from our vocabulary and focus on the only three pillars that are proven to work. Prevention must be our highest priority. A life destroyed by drugs is extremely difficult, if at all possible, to recover and can never fully be restored.

We all cherish our freedom, but freedom without boundaries and accountability is destroying our future, and ultimately robbing us of our freedom and our dignity. We must raise up positive role models for our young people and renew healthy accountability to our leaders and mentors. We must restore hope and purpose to our young people if we are going to succeed.

We must learn from the successful enforcement strategies that have been employed by other locations, like New York and Sweden, which have successfully reduced the supply of drugs, focusing anti-drug law enforcement on efforts against the drug activity in neighbourhoods and around schools, where they promote it the most, making it hard to find a place that is known for selling drugs. If the police are doing their job and they're moving them around, they can't set up shop and actually have a storefront; it's a lot harder for individuals to find them in the first place.

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In the case of treatment, we have to make sure it's timely and available. I can't count how many times I've heard that somebody wanted treatment, but it wasn't available for them. At the same time, I've heard the issues about funding, but I know there's a lot of funding that goes into methadone and into needle exchange that could much more productively be put into detox, from what I understand. A viable treatment program should instil in its participants the principle of personal accountability and give them the skills and tools they need to become productive and self-reliant individuals, rather than continuing them on the road of dependency.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Parker:

Mr. John Parker: Thank you.

The Chair: Now, from the Abbotsford Addiction Centre, we have Charlaine Avery.

Ms. Charlaine Avery (Clinical Director, Abbotsford Addiction Centre): Thank you for this opportunity to come and speak. I, like Barry, have several hats. I'm the mother of seven children. Every one has been affected differentially by alcohol and drugs, although I don't speak to that much in my brief.

The Abbotsford Addiction Centre has been around for over 12 years. We've served over 9,000 people in this community. We have a broad-based idea about what it's been like for people in this town struggling with addiction. We're an outpatient treatment facility, which means we do referrals out and those kinds of things. We're the fifth largest city in B.C., and I have two adult counsellors. We had a waiting list of 102 people in the summer who we could not get to. We want to help people, we have the skill and the ability to help people, we just don't have the resources we need.

I'm here today too as a witness for the people who have died from their addiction and for the people who have triumphed, because we see both at our centre, and also for the people who are still struggling. What may be surprising to you is that Abbotsford has the same drug problems as Vancouver. I've been here three years, and I've been able to gather information based on the people who come for help. This is what they're telling us their problems are. Nine per cent use IV drugs currently; 12% have used IV drugs in the past. Multiple drug use is the norm; 60% of people come because they have problems with alcohol.

Alcohol is actually the gateway drug, to go by our experience with people. When you think about it, the only rite of passage we have for our young sons is drinking. When you think about the number of people who die every year because of alcohol, you think of all the accidents, you think of everything, whatever strategy you come up with must include alcohol. I've talked to so many addicts. They drink, and then they use, marijuana sometimes, alcohol a lot too; 43% of the people who came for help used cocaine, 33% used cannabis, 19% used heroin. With those 33% who came for cannabis, they found it to be a problem. It is addictive. I've had people go into withdrawal. They have anger, paranoia, all kinds of problems. The marijuana that's available today is not like it used to be. We need better research, though, so we can convince those folks who don't recognize the harm it's doing to them, so we can actually have some up-to-date research. Canada is sadly lacking in up-to-date research. It's something we need to do, especially on B.C. bud.

The other piece no one has talked about today is dual diagnosis; 50% to 80% of the people who come for help with us have a co-occurring mental illness. Research in the United States has shown that the mental illness often arose in adolescence, before they started to use drugs. Many of the drugs that are used for psychcotropic meds actually are derivatives of things like what the people are getting off the street. Is it possible people are self-medicating? What is it about our psychiatric care that leaves these people to seek these as the alternatives?

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Most of those people are depressed, but we do see a lot of anxiety and schizophrenia and those kind of problems as well. The percentage of chronic users was 26%, and 30% were at risk of relapse. With a waiting list such as we've got, how are we going to get to these people soon enough that they don't relapse? We have a window of opportunity that's very brief, and we're only able to refer out within that window of opportunity that we have, or get them into a group.

More than 20% of the people who come to us are victims of childhood abuse, sexual, physical, emotional, and neglect. There is research that shows that one of the bases of addiction is a lack of connection, a lack of caring. So we really need to have a strategy that also looks at how we maintain healthy families and how we intervene when children ask for help early on. Of the people in this town who came for help 6% were homeless, and 3% were part of sexual exploitation or trade. We've had 7 deaths in the last three years since I got here, accidental overdoses, suicide, and a long-term illness due to liver. These people were seeking help, but sometimes it was too late. Sometimes they made a mistake. We need to prevent these deaths as well as the other problems.

There are no easy answers in the pathway to addiction, and there are great differences and complexities in how people get well. We strongly support the four-pillar approach, but the focus needs to be equally on all pillars. The prevention is important, the treatment is important, harm reduction is important, and law enforcement is important. Sometimes too much attention gets focused on just one piece of it. It's the whole meal deal we need here for our people.

You were wondering about prevention. In B.C. we have a very piecemeal approach to prevention. A week before addiction awareness week we were told not to do anything too fancy. But we do have an FAS prevention committee in this town, and I think the federal government has done a good job with that. We need more money for FAS, because FAS will never change. These kids will permanently have these challenges and disabilities.

The other thing I think the federal government could do is have a nationwide strategy on prevention, so that there is the funding and the advertising is getting out there, and that it is being assessed and evaluated at the national level. If you leave that up to us, it's too hard to do, we just don't have the resources.

As for what's going into the schools here, our organization has brought Jay Fell, a quadriplegic 18-year-old who had a serious problem with drugs and ended up in his condition. He came last year and spoke to over 600 or 700 kids in this town. I have one youth worker who carries a caseload of more than 70 students in these schools. She goes into the schools three times a week as well. So we're doing what we can as an impact on other programs in town, and we are trying to get to the kids repeatedly.

Treatment, as I said, is seriously underfunded. I told you about our problems. Detox is a major problem. Last year we did a needs survey in the Upper Fraser Region. There were 89 people who needed detox, 12 got in, and they had to wait three to five weeks, on average. So it goes on.

Am I running out of time?

The Chair: Actually, you've run out of time.

Ms. Charlaine Avery: Okay.

The Chair: I apologize.

Ms. Charlaine Avery: Perhaps I'll give you the brief.

The Chair: Yes, that would be wonderful. I'm sure everyone in the room has appreciated the information you have given to us so far.

Ms. Charlaine Avery: So I'll just end—we need a compassionate, integrated approach.

The Chair: Thank you very much, and thank you to all the presenters today and in this latest round.

I have forgotten one, Les Talvio. Les, five minutes.

Mr. Les Talvio (Individual Presentation): I'll be very brief—

The Chair: Or less.

Mr. Les Talvio: I'll be less, because I don't like doing public speaking.

I'll be speaking from a personal perspective. I won't be giving you any statistics or quoting from any studies. I've been involved in providing services to people involved in street life and drug activity for over 10 years in Surrey. I wasn't going to speak about marijuana, but I have two comments I'd like to make about it. I have known people to be addicted to marijuana and to be in detox, and personally, marijuana was a gateway drug for myself.

I have seen all too often someone addicted to drugs wanting to receive help, such as detox, and having to wait for a bed. I personally have known people who want to get into a detox program go back to IV drug use, because the pain is too great and they cannot wait. This has led to unnecessary deaths.

I have been to too many funerals, funerals that could have been avoided had there been more resources made available to provide detox beds in the community. Personally, I'm not aware of any detox available this side of the Fraser River, but we have two needle exchanges 30 minutes away either side of Abbotsford, one in Surrey and one in Chilliwack. The one in Surrey I have been involved in since its inception, and with the agency providing other services as well, such as shelters, soup kitchens, drop-ins, and so forth.

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In my opinion, the needle exchange programs just prolong the agony, but do not address the problem of addiction. On a recent tour with some members of city council of an area frequented by those addicted, I asked a man his thoughts on needle exchange programs and detox centres; his reply was, drugs and needles are killing me, I need detox.

I would ask that the government put their resources into funding detox centres and education, not needle exchange programs or safe injection sites, and I'll leave my comments at that.

The Chair: Thank you, Les. You get a prize for taking the least amount of time.

Randy, you have a couple of minutes.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you. I'll be brief, Madam Chair. We are running behind, and they have a bus to get to.

I was just presented with these two magazines called Pot Shot”. They're from the Marijuana Growers Institute, I guess, whatever they are, from a very angry young man—I don't think he's here—who is obviously a fairly big advocate for marijuana. This particular group, I suppose, advocates that there's nothing wrong with it, but I think I've heard three people out of six say marijuana is a serious problem. What is the difference between you who say it is a problem and a group that represents 600,000 people or so that says it's not a problem?

Mr. Andy Rowe: Marijuana for me was not only a source of illegal income, but a gateway drug. But alcohol is no better than marijuana. In my experience—God forbid I need any more experience in this—I've never seen anybody beat their wife on marijuana, I've never seen a bar fight through marijuana, but what it does to the brain is kind of what alcohol does. If you drink all day, you're not going to accomplish much in life.

I have two young boys, and I will go any length to keep them from marijuana, because I want them to have a brain. People who advocate for marijuana seem to go through life asleep, as I did. I grew marijuana for a lot of years, and then smoked maybe an ounce a day, like cigarettes, and it just kept me in a fog.

If we're going to address marijuana, we have to put it in at least the category of alcohol. It's causing a great deal of expense because of illegal growth of marijuana. The illegal growth of marijuana funds cocaine. Right now, because they're fighting cocaine in the States, it's moving here; the labs are actually at Maple Ridge. The dealers see the problem of cocaine. It's cheap to make methamphetamine. You can make $500,000 worth with $2,000 worth of the right chemical. It's kind of like mixing Drano with ether. I've been to the hospital three times this month, where the doctors have called me and said, Andy, what's wrong with this kid? He's burned from the cut in the drug in his throat and his face.

What you do is take a pound of cocaine, which is expensive, and then you take about 80%—you'll never see on the streets here, but you'll see it back east a lot, because a lot of the pure cocaine is in Montreal—and you take a half a pound of methemphetamine, which is Drano and ether, and you mix it together.

What you're getting now is the people smoking crack and especially the IV users being turned from cocaine to methemphetamines, and that's why you're seeing in the courts—I wish some of the people I work with in the courts here in Abbotsford were here to support what I'm saying—is outbursts from children who were passive.

Methemphetamine is growing abundantly in the States. It's always been a problem back east. I started 25 years ago with methemphetamine. It is the most violent, the most destructive drug of them all, because it permanently damages your brain and it brings out violence.

So in the next year you can say okay, let's give them the heroin, we can't fight, let's give up on that, but what are you going to do when they want methemphetamine? What are you going to do when the east coast problem of hillbilly heroin hits here?

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We've already had a doctor, in my book, kill a person in this city, a young girl with prescription drugs. Anything short of manslaughter is just not credible. We never heard what happened to that, but we need to educate the doctors too, so that the drug addicts can't go and get medication that is stamped by the pharmacies and the government. But most important in this community is the need to pull the blinds on the businesses and the drug dealers. I don't want drugs on every corner for my child to have a choice.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr Neufeld, you wanted to comment?

Mr. Barry Neufeld: Schoolteachers can tell immediately when a student is starting to use marijuana, because they lose all motivation, they don't work at their school work. Quite often kids who are overactive are prescribed things like Dexedrine, Ritalin; they don't like the side effects, but they get a similar effect from marijuana, and they like the side effects of that. Personally, I agree that marijuana is a gateway drug. I've never seen any violent offences through marijuana, but I see it as causing a lot of unemployment and a lot of homelessness.

The Chair: Thank you.

Let me say that this round probably has had fewer questions than we normally would have had. But again, we wanted to accommodate so many more people than we had originally planned for. We've had the benefit of your speaking to us. I think Mr. LeBlanc will agree not to ask questions.

We really appreciate all the energy and effort you've put into your presentations today, giving us the benefit of your advice. If there are things you've heard today that you would like to address, or things you hear in the next couple of months that you'd like to address, we certainly would appreciate your experience. And in almost every case we wish you lots of good luck with the work you're doing, and we really appreciate being in Abbotsford and having a chance to hear from people in this community.

Before I turn it over to Mr. White for a quick wrap-up perhaps, I wanted to thank our technicians and our staff. Many of you have already met Lise Churney, Carole Chafe our clerk, and our researcher Marilyn Pilon. Randy's assistant, who's there in the background somewhere, has done a lot of work to help us with facilitating as many guests as possible today. I also want to thank my colleague Dominic LeBlanc, and you, Randy, for encouraging us to come to Abbotsford. Thank you, all, very much. And to all the people who came and listened all day and didn't have a chance and would like to get in touch with us, please take our card; we would be happy to have your ideas and your experience, and we wish you luck.

Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: Madam Chair, I do want to thank the committee for coming and bringing Ottawa to the riding, which is the right way to do it. And I want to thank, Paddy, both you and Dominic. I'll say it again, we are members of fighting, competing political parties in this country, but one thing we agree on is that there's a serious problem. The politicians you see here are volunteers on a committee; we don't get appointed to this. We know there's a problem, and now we are going to do something about it, at least at the federal government level. We have to make some recommendations, and everything you've said here today is going to be used. For those colleagues listening to this right now in Ottawa, they know that we mean business here.

So I want to thank you all for coming out and seeing how the process works, but more importantly, having a say in something that's very near and dear to your hearts. So thank you very much for coming.

The Chair: And thank you also to our interpreters.

Nobody block our access to the highways, okay.

Thank you all very much.

I will officially adjourn this meeting.