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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, May 23, 2002

0905

The Chair (Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.)):

0910

The Reverend Ross Powell (Faith Alive Ministries)

0915

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage (Former Director, Alcohol and Drug Services, Regina Health District)

0920

0925

The Chair

0930

Ms. Sandra Lane (Primary Prevention Worker, Saskatoon District Health)

0935

0940

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ)

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin (Executive Director, White Buffalo Youth Lodge)

0945

0950

0955

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

A voice

The Chair

Rev. Powell

1000

The Chair

Rev. Powell

The Chair

1005

Mrs. Skelton

Mr. Lyell Armitage

Ms. Carol Skelton

Mr. Lyell Armitage

1010

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

Ms. Carol Skelton

Mr. Gary Beaudin

1015

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

Mr. Réal Ménard

1020

Mr. Lyell Armitage

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

Ms. Sandra Lane

1025

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Gary Beaudin

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Gary Beaudin

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Gary Beaudin

1030

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

1035

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.)

1040

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

1045

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

1050

1055

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Rev. Powell

1100

The Chair

1115

Ms. Carol Skelton

Mrs. Skelton

1120

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

Ms. Carol Skelton

Mr. Gary Beaudin

1125

Ms. Carol Skelton

Ms. Sandra Lane

Ms. Carol Skelton

Mr. Gary Beaudin

1130

Ms. Carol Skelton

Mr. Gary Beaudin

Ms. Carol Skelton

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

Mrs. Skelton

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

Mr. Gary Beaudin

Mr. Lyell Armitage

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

1135

Mr. Lyell Armitage

The Chair

Mr. Lyell Armitage

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

1140

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

1145

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

1150

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

1155

The Chair

Rev. Powell

The Chair

Rev. Powell

The Chair

Rev. Powell

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

Mr. Lyell Armitage

The Chair

Mr. Gary Beaudin

The Chair

Ms. Sandra Lane

Mr. Lyell Armitage

1200

The Chair

1205

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

CANADA

Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs

NUMBER 046

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, May 23, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0905)

[English]

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

We are very pleased to be here in Saskatoon. We are the Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs. This committee was struck in May 2001 following an order of reference from the House of Commons. That order of reference was to consider the factors underlying or relating to the non-medical use of drugs. Then, on April 17 of this year, we were also referred the subject matter of a private member's bill, Bill C-344, an act to amend the Contraventions Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act respecting marijuana.

We are very pleased to have with us today as witnesses: from Faith Alive Ministries, Reverend Ross Powell; from the Regina Health District, Lyell Armitage, a former director of alcohol and drug services, and obviously still in good stead with them if they've asked him to come and represent them; from Saskatoon District Health, Sandra Lane, a primary prevention worker with the addictions services; and from the White Buffalo Youth Lodge, Gary Beaudin, the executive director. Welcome.

Before you start, let me tell you who we are. We have with us today Carol Skelton, who we are very happy to have on our committee; Réal Ménard, who is a member of Parliament from Montreal; and Dominic LeBlanc, who is a member of Parliament from New Brunswick. My name is Paddy Torsney. I'm a member of Parliament from Burlington, Ontario, which is near Toronto.

Chantal Collin and Marilyn Pilon are our researchers, and Eugene Morawski is our interim clerk. Do you want to take a bow?

We have a whole team of people who make the meeting run smoothly. They control all the microphones, and they encourage us not to touch them. We have interpretation services and headsets, if you want to listen in English or in French. We probably will need those when it comes to the questioning.

I think you've all been told to be under 10 minutes in your presentations, correct? I'll keep track and give you a one-minute signal, and then at 10 minutes I'll ask you to wrap up. That “in conclusion” phrase works very well about then.

We have a lot of time this morning, so I'm not too worried if people go over, but in the interest of fairness, we can always do wrap-up comments if you have a lot more to say.

Does anybody have any questions?

Reverend Powell, you're up first.

¿ (0910)

The Reverend Ross Powell (Faith Alive Ministries): I'd like to thank you for inviting me today.

I've been involved in the ministry and in dealing with people full time for the last 20 years, and when it comes to the non-medical use of drugs, it has been a very pervasive thing. I've seen it destroy a lot of lives.

When I use the term “drugs”, I'm also going to include alcohol, because it is something I have watched. It has been a totally destructive force.

I use the example of bleach on a fabric. Bleach has a tendency to be destructive. It will eat away at the fabric. When does it actually destroy it? We don't know, but it becomes very, very pervasive. It's like an acid that just eats away at everything.

I see that as one of the biggest problems we've had when dealing with drugs and alcohol. It's been a thing that has destroyed families, and everybody--or a lot of people--seem to feel that nothing can really be done. It can't be legislated.

Something I keep hearing a lot is that government cannot legislate morality. I beg to differ, because I believe government has a responsibility to set a standard. I believe it is up to the government to lay down a foundation that this is what we stand for, this is what we believe. I see it as something very necessary in our society. What has happened is that the standard keeps getting lowered to the lowest common denominator, and as a result, things have become very ongoing and pervasive in a destructive manner. What I'd like to say is that as we take a look at the role of government, I believe government needs to take a responsible stand. When I talk about legislating things....

I'll try to back up here for a moment. In our Constitution we have the freedom of religion. One of the things I keep seeing happening is that it's more that we're trying to promote a freedom from religion. One of the things I see with religion--and when I call it “religion”, I prefer to say “faith”--is a faith in something beyond ourselves. The programs that I've seen work--for example, 12-step programs, Alcoholics Anonymous, NA--all promote a belief in a power greater than themselves. In other words, we're not just in this about us, because if it were just up to us, we could fix everything. But we've watched society go downhill and downhill.

I have seen drugs destroy families, taking responsible people who I have known to be breadwinners, fathers, mothers, and changing their perspective and destroying their moral character to the point that children are left out on the street, children are not being looked after, and homes are literally destroyed. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that people try to step in. Unless there is a change in the person, there's no real desire to change.

I'm losing my train of thought here because I'm thinking ahead.

Families are the nuclear society. Without the family, we don't have society as such, because we need one another. I've watched drugs destroy that. I've also watched.... When it comes to....

Excuse me. I'm sorry, I'm just....

¿ (0915)

The Chair: That's okay. Do you want me to come back to you?

Rev. Powell: If you could. I'm sorry.

The Chair: That's absolutely not a problem.

Mr. Armitage.

Mr. Lyell Armitage (Former Director, Alcohol and Drug Services, Regina Health District): Thank you.

I'd like to thank whoever is responsible for extending the invitation for me to be here with you this morning.

I just want to clarify that I am the former director of alcohol and drug services. Up until April 1 of this year I was with the organization, and I'm not with them any more. Some of my comments may not be representative of what the Regina Health District believes, so I just want the record to state that. I'm going to be frank and honest with you because I don't have to worry any more.

As I said, I am the former director of alcohol and drug services for the Regina Health District, and prior to that, I was the southern regional manager for the Saskatchewan Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission. In total, I have 16 years' experience in these two positions.

I've worked in industry as a counsellor in the employee assistance program area, and I was a principal in a private counselling and consulting company in British Columbia for seven years. I consider myself to be a pioneer in the area of interventions, re addictions. In total, my professional experience in the treatment, recovery, and addictions field is over 26 years.

I'm also a recovering alcoholic, and that is how I indirectly got involved in this business. I've been sober since 1960. My wife and I have been blessed with four wonderful children, three boys and a girl. In turn, they've produced four grandchildren. Our three sons also suffer from the disease of chemical dependency, and I'm very happy to report that all of them are clean and sober and involved in their own recovery.

To summarize, I'm an experienced counsellor, consultant, and administrator in the addictions and recovery field. I've been there as an addict who is in the process of recovery. I'm the parent of three addicted adult children, and I'm the grandfather of four beautiful young grandchildren. I believe I'm here today representing the four youngest of our extended family, because of my concerns about this whole area of illicit drug use.

I want to make my position perfectly clear. I think we are going the wrong way in this country when we speak of decriminalizing or legalizing the use of illicit drugs. I believe we need to increase our emphasis on primary education and training; prevention of drug use; increase efforts to reduce the incidence of drug use; renew the rejection of drug use as an acceptable and viable lifestyle; and renew efforts to improve the availability and adequacy of drug treatment, not only in this country but also in this province.

I believe in abstinence for those who suffer from the disease of addiction. It is important to recognize that all mood-altering substances profoundly disrupt the function of the central nervous system. The most evident manifestation of this disruption is euphoria, which is, in effect, I believe, one of the main reasons why people use drugs.

In addition to a change in mood, however, comes a profound impairment in judgment and impulse control, mood instability, and impaired stress tolerance. Typically, addiction manifests itself, its early signs and symptoms, in disturbed relationships. Families fall apart and partnerships disintegrate. Ultimately, the ability to work is compromised, and by the end of the process, jobs have been lost and the addict is faced with a life of destruction.

It is worth noting that drug addiction causes poverty, crime, and neuro-psychiatric degeneration far more commonly than the reverse. An addicted person, in my opinion, cannot safely use any mood-altering substances.

Unfortunately, the notion of abstinence-based recovery has fallen out of favour with those who currently fund treatment programs in this province. Dominating the agenda now is the notion of harm reduction, which generally implies that government policy should concentrate on lowering the harm associated with drug use rather than on reducing it itself or getting the addict off drugs altogether. There appears to be a shift of policy in this harm reduction approach of the government that is one of increased acceptance of drug use and the primary focus not on consumption, but on the reduction of certain identified harms.

One implication of such a shift is that there is no evidence that the harm reduction approach works in the way it is intended, to reduce the harm of drug use. In countries that have adopted this harm reduction approach, increases in the number of addicts are reported and there is no discernable, substantiated advantage in reducing such harm as HIV and other communicable types of conditions versus countries that have more restrictive policies. I'm referring to the recent comparison of the drug policies in the Netherlands versus Sweden. It suggests that treatment, not harm reduction, remains the most effective strategy to reduce such problems as HIV and hepatitis in drug users. Sweden has very good success in this area with aggressive, comprehensive, and sustained treatment.

¿ (0920)

In my experience in this field, some individuals go on to the flavour of the month, or a panacea that they think is going to be the answer to this particular problem. To some it is sexy to go with new ideas, to be on the cutting edge, etc. In my opinion, often what we need to do is to do the job we've already been doing better and improve it. In Saskatchewan we have a very proud and long history of treatment and prevention and recovery services. I feel we're getting away from that now as a result of this approach to harm reduction.

I have three suggestions for the committee.

First, I suggest that as a country we look closely at the way prevention, especially primary prevention, has been neglected. It's inconsistent and it's marginalized in comparison to the other elements of the drug response. We know that prevention can work if it's consistent, comprehensive, and durable. I recommend that Canada consider that the harm reduction focus strategy would rather devalue prevention of our front-line responses and make it more difficult for prevention to happen. I suggest we look at the examples of drinking and driving, smoking, nutrition practices, and many other behaviors that have been improved measurably over the past few decades precisely because of consistent, comprehensive, and lasting prevention messages and policies. I suggest that we adopt prevention, not harm reduction, as the umbrella of our drug response. It is positive and expresses the hope and desire of society in a much better way than harm reduction, which can also be argued is ultimately representing giving up and giving in, an attitude that “There isn't anything we can do about this, so let's give the drugs away”. I believe prevention is the best harm reduction.

I suggest we look seriously at the adequacy and the accessibility of our treatment centres for the task of helping people get off drugs and stay off drugs. Europe, especially Sweden, generally offers much better examples in this regard. There is a serious shortage of treatment beds in this country and a serious lack of a comprehensiveness and a duration to complete rehabilitation properly. I believe treatment is the best harm reduction.

Finally, I suggest that we not adopt or continue to use the idea of harm reduction as a principal drug response. Rather, I recommend that the current drug laws be left in place as they provide controls on physical and economic availability and social acceptability. The focus instead should be placed on further reducing the social acceptance of drug use. If any change is to be made in the drug laws, I recommend it be limited to offering alternatives to charges and incarceration. Alternates could be treatment, community service, and education. Reducing availability and acceptability of drugs through laws, I believe, is the best harm reduction.

Thank you.

¿ (0925)

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

I don't believe Mr. Powell will be back with us, unfortunately.

We will now turn to Ms. Lane.

¿ (0930)

Ms. Sandra Lane (Primary Prevention Worker, Saskatoon District Health): I was just sitting here thinking how timely this is to be sitting here this morning, with our newspapers talking about the death of a young lady in our city over the weekend. It is believed her death is related to drug use at a rave in the city. So it's rather timely.

I have worked with addiction services in our province for about 31 years, since I was just a baby. I worked as a nurse through the 1970s at an in-patient treatment centre, which treated young people from the age of 12 right up to adulthood. I then worked as a counsellor in the same in-patient centre. Then I moved to working in an out-patient clinic with clients on the outside, using an outreach to impaired drivers and other individuals.

But I always felt we were missing the boat. About 15 years ago, I therefore moved to working in the area of prevention and education. As the former speaker said, we have missed the boat when it comes to education. It's not out there. Young people, their parents, and families are waiting for the education to tell them what they can do. It's not happening.

Drug use is going up, I understand. When kids come to see me or when I do classroom presentations, they tell me that they don't drink any more. There's no need to drink, because they can get a drug that's easy to conceal and they do not have to get somebody to pull for them. Many of the young people who I see in my office will say, “I do not” or “I've never even used alcohol”. That's a real switch for me--from ancient history--because most young people in the past have always said, “Oh yeah, I started with a couple of beers”. So there have been changes, which we are coming across from the depths that we work at. I really find this interesting, probably because of my age.

I also came to work in this field as a wife and mother of people who have become involved in an addictive process, with alcohol or marijuana. It's very scary. So for me it's personal as well. But I don't think you can find anybody who doesn't have something personal when it comes to this field.

I believe it has everything to do with family. I've heard that said a couple of times. In fact, there's an addiction conference going on in the city right now, which is addressing the notion of back to the family. I work with a tremendous number of families in schools, where parents, who have little knowledge, are very surprised by the knowledge they need to have. I always tell them, “You need to know more than your kids”. I try to give them that information, so that they can be prepared. One of the things that happens is that young people start growing up. They separate, as they have to do. Often parents become separated when they're needed the very most. So I believe that first of all it has to be a family approach.

I just made a few notes here on things I really believe in. After I make them, I'll certainly be wide open for questions.

First of all, I think the continuum of primary prevention, early intervention, recovery, treatment, or tertiary or whatever you want to call it, go exactly in that order. We first need to work with the preventive aspect. We'll never prevent all of these problems. It would be wonderful if we could, but it will never happen.

We have to be aware that early intervention is the next very important step. We need to be there very early in the process, because research indicates that the earlier an arrest can be made within the addictive process, the more likely that people will be able to recover. When an addictive process is left for a period of time, it's much more difficult to turn someone around who has lost an awful lot in their life--it is much more difficult. It only makes sense.

So we must understand that primary prevention is the very first part of this process, but it is often missed. The other end of the process is very attractive. It's right there in your face. I can sit in my office any day and take far more calls, with someone saying, “I have someone who's in trouble”, than act at the other end of this spectrum. They are right out there. So we have to be more vocalized in this way.

I think we need to target the preventive areas of knowledge. I always say to young people, “You are very wise young people. If you have the knowledge, you can make decisions.” When people do not have that knowledge, how do you make a decision around drug use? How do you make a decision when you do not know the decision process and what you're facing? Many young people do not know that they can be prevented from travelling if they have a charge against them for marijuana use. It surprises them. They don't realize that they can't become a peace officer, which has always been their goal, if they have a charge against them. They need to know.

So I think the first thing is the knowledge part. The most popular part of influencing individuals is education. I mentioned that family is first and foremost, and with that family comes education for that whole group of people.

We developed a little handbook that goes out to hockey players, and we have given each of you one. I'll talk a wee bit more about that process. One parent told me the other day it was the first time, through this handbook, they had ever sat down with their young people and actually talked about the drug addiction process. You can imagine what could happen on a bigger scale.

I think persuasion to modify attitudes is a very important part. To be able to talk to young people and their families, to stand up for what you believe in and your values, even if the rest of the world doesn't stand that way, is an important value to get back to.

Target some of the risk groups. I mentioned having had a partner who was an alcoholic and a son who became addicted to marijuana. Target groups of people we know are at risk. We know that; our treatment centres show it; it's written in research right across the board. We need to be able to target and say, “Look, this is what can happen here”. We need to be able to target key influences as well.

Of course, control is a big part of legislation when things change. If the drinking age goes up, a change in drinking patterns will follow. When there is legislation in place, that is certainly a part of control.

There is the issue of confidence development, the self-esteem of young people we get into our services. One of the first things they say to us--I won't put it in their words because it's probably not fit for this particular setting--is they feel like crap. Their self-esteem has been dwindled away over the years. If you talk with the kids, enhancing self-esteem is a very big part. Confidence development includes that. The self-confidence of young people and the life skills of young people are extremely important.

¿ (0935)

We really need to focus on those areas of primary prevention, because the other end often gets the attention. We need to develop and maintain peer programs in schools. It's not a new concept that young people listen to young people, especially when they have accurate information. It's very different from me coming into a classroom and talking about drug use. It's really rewarding when you see that happening.

We need more material to develop and facilitate primary prevention and early intervention programs for parents and attract parents to those programs. That's where the answers lie: within the family.

We need guidelines for developing alcohol and drug use policies for all activities and anywhere youth are involved. This handbook is part of this. It's an initiative undertaken by Saskatoon District Health and the Saskatoon Minor Hockey Association. It's an initiative that helps coaches and parents of minor hockey players to develop policies to keep their players safe.

We need up-to-date Canadian print and video resources to be promoted and available for all prevention initiatives. Maybe it's because I'm behind the times, but one of the things I find is that it is often difficult to get up-to-date, accurate Canadian information.

We also need media messages for young people and parents, depicting prevention through accurate information. These messages need to trigger communication, so we can talk to our young people and others about what is going on. I watched one the other day on Ecstasy. I have no idea what channel it was on, but it was pretty exciting. It just came on, and, boom, it was gone before I could realize what was happening. It just talked about the effects of Ecstasy on the brain. It was so fast. I was thinking, “I wish my grandson were here, because, boy, would he get a lesson, right?” But it just came and went. These are the kinds of things that are just there in our face, which we can say, “Wow, I didn't know that.”

Our consistent, continuous, and appropriate education needs to go on. I think Mr. Armitage mentioned the inconsistency of what does go on. It's for our young people. So it needs to be consistent across the board. We should not to be afraid to talk about it.

In my role as a prevention worker, I'd just like to mention a couple of things. I do classroom presentations on a continuing basis. They lap it up. They love it. They love to hear the information. They make some decisions. They do some written work. But I can't go around. There are three or four other people in our city here. We have something like 500 to 600 schools. We can't reach everybody.

We do a lot of parent programs. I work very closely with the Saskatoon city police--whom you'll be hearing from tomorrow--in a program called drug and alcohol resistance training. It is a program that has a parent component and a student component.

Primary prevention.... Of course, as you're probably well aware, many of the people come to those programs because they already have someone involved. They see a need. When you don't need the program, it's very difficult to get people out.

We need seminars for professionals right across the board, so that we get on the same page and are not isolated in working with this, or preventing it, whatsoever. We need to team up or partner up with all the other organizations that are influential with young people. We have programs like the Wraparound, the Absentee Assessment Team Project, Kids First, and all of these kinds of things that we need to partner together, so that we don't work in isolation.

We need to have consultations like the current one, so that people hear and go back with messages from the people who work at a grassroots level and care.

The last thing I will say is that I believe in prevention, early intervention, and recovery, and that every person is an individual. We cannot lump people together and just say everything fits for every person. We need to look at people biologically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually, and address the issues with groups and individuals that meet all of these needs. If we don't do this, we will miss the boat and keep coming back to revisit the issue.

That's all I have to say. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Sandra Lane: I have lots more to say, but....

¿ (0940)

The Chair: I was going to say that hopefully you'll have something to say when we have time for questions.

Oh, yes. It's only in English.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ): It will be difficult to get the brief translated. I think we can still distribute it.

[English]

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Beaudin.

[Translation]

Mr. Gary Beaudin (Executive Director, White Buffalo Youth Lodge): Good morning. It is a beautiful day. Welcome to Saskatoon.

[English]

I work at the While Buffalo Youth Lodge. It's a facility in Saskatoon's inner city. It's a large teepee structure. When you drive by, you can't help but notice it. It's one of the most beautiful facilities on the street.

It's a partnership with the Saskatoon Tribal Council, Saskatoon District Health, the City of Saskatoon, and the Métis nations of Saskatchewan. It exists because there is a need in the inner city for programming for the hundreds and hundreds of kids who live in that community and are experiencing poverty and pretty much every kind of issue we can imagine, such as drug use, exploitation. There was nothing for them in that area.

Some very hard-working managers got together with some good ideas and came up with the idea of a facility in the inner city that would address the recreational, health, spiritual, and cultural needs of the kids living in that area.

Most of the families in that community are very isolated. Most of them are immersed in the issues of the third-generation residential school problems and residue. We have a major issue around neglect in our homes in that area. Just within the first nation and Métis populations, we have a lot of major residual effects. There's a lot of neglect and all kinds of terrible issues.

As a result, our kids basically don't access services in the same way other children might. My mother is first nation and my dad is Métis, so we haven't been estranged from the residential school effects and stuff in my own family. We observe that our kids take a road that is sometimes pre-paved for them, down the trail of the criminal justice system, alcoholism, violence, and several of the common issues that first nations and Métis people have been labelled with.

We provide a variety of services in a mainly preventive manner. The kids we deal with are certainly not like any other children in our community. As Sandra says, we certainly can't lump them together. It's very important that we don't group them together. When people talk about being at risk, I know teenagers who are at risk of using marijuana and alcohol, but our kids are at risk of dying every day--several of them. Our kids are at risk of being raped in alleys by Johns. That's the sort of stuff our kids risk.

Our kids break windows and steal from cars because they have to. They're hungry and social assistance rates don't provide them with enough food, so they have to access the Friendship Inn, the soup kitchen, and the Salvation Army. That's why they steal. They also use to medicate themselves because they're in pain from physical and mental abuse, body memories, trauma, and post-traumatic stress. They use for those reasons.

When I was about 15 or 16 I started using drugs--mainly marijuana, hash, and things like that. I did it mainly because I had no self-esteem. I lived in a small community in Alberta, and there was really nothing else for us to do there. But as a small community of aboriginal people--and my family was one of those families--we had major issues to deal with every day, such as racism, self-esteem, identify loss, and all those problems.

As a result, some of my other friends--they weren't necessarily all first nations kids or aboriginal kids--and I used because we didn't feel very good about ourselves. It was quite simple. We used because we were missing things in our lives that every child should have. We used because it gave us togetherness. We used because it gave us a bit of an identity, and sometimes it made us popular in school. We used as part of the culture. We used because it was part of the music we were listening to at the time. Drugs were cool. So there were all those reasons.

¿ (0945)

But in my job today, I've never seen kids with so many barriers in their lives. Our kids deal with so many survival issues on a daily basis, they have better street survival skills than I would as an adult on the street.

We have several recreation programs as means to engage kids. It's all about engaging kids and earning trust, and not dropping people into a facility with lab coats and flip-chart boards, and things like that, to teach. It's all about engagement. We also have an addictions worker from district health, and as part of our partnership we have several recreational staff. These people don't look like their fields. Instead, they look like people.

Using recreation as a means...it's very important that we get to the identity and self-esteem problems in our children. Our nurse plays basketball, which allows her to get to the kids, so that she can help them with sexual health and these type of things. Our addictions worker takes the kids swimming and sits in a health circle or a talking circle as a means to establish some trust and gain relationships with kids, so that they will come and tell her about their constant use.

They're at risk of using IV drugs. These types of things are what our kids are coming to our staff with. For example, they have nothing and they have a friend or someone who wants them to work, or they have a family member, or they're playing in their front yard and they're eight years old and people pull over and offer them money for sex. They have nothing. Some of our kids are using all the time.

We've created a continuum of services in a preventive way, starting at the age of zero to one. We have so many partnerships. For example, Urban First Nation Services Inc. has put in several programs, like their Head Start program--a federal initiative--to work with children and families from ages zero to three to four. They then can come to our after-school programs, in which we provide a snack, recreational programming, and a lot of unconditional acceptance, love, and belonging. That's certainly something our kids are missing.

We then move on to different age categories. We go right up to 17. We also have some family programming. It's all about engagement through programming. We have two programs. We have elders. We have out-of-school programs. We have two classrooms and partnerships with the public and the Catholic school systems. The Catholic system puts a teacher and a TA in a room, to focus on kids who have been out of school for possibly six months or more. In our community, there are hundreds of kids who have been out of school for more than six months. Some of the kids who come to us have been out of school for four years. Families come in with kids who are 6, 7, 11, or 12, who have been out of school for a year and have absolutely no attachment to school. They are so far gone that nobody knows where they are. The only way to track them is through social assistance. That's sad.

We have a program that looks like a small community. Our high school classroom has the support of the addictions worker, the nurse, and a teacher. When kids come in after two days' absence, he's the type of teacher who will say, “Where were you? I was worried about you. Have you eaten?” We need to accept that the kids who come in live street lifestyles. Some of them are up till four in the morning and still manage to make it into school at 9:30 or 10 in the morning. We need to accept that that's the lifestyle they're leading. If we continue to say to the kids, “Sorry, you don't fit into our system, I'm suspending you because you've missed school”, we are going to end up with a larger problem down the road. This is because most of these children and people end up in another system--the criminal system. This is something we see every single day. To us, this is very important.

The addictions, use, and self-esteem issues all seem to intertwine together. There's not one particular area.... So we end up having to provide an integrated type of service, which works well. It's very user friendly. It's client-based. It's all about a group of people meeting the needs of one client, and working towards the same goals, with the best intentions for the client.

¿ (0950)

We see kids coming in who are using; some kids are addicted to IV drugs. We see kids coming in who are forced to move pills for older kids because they can't get into major trouble for it. They're little drug mules. We see kids who are already addicted to over-the-counter drugs, such as Gravol. Of course, kids come in who are addicted to Ritalin, with Ritalin-type behaviour. We have a large number of FAS kids. That is another issue that is going to be huge. We see several kids with fetal alcohol effects, syndrome, and things like that, which is something we'll need to look at in the future as well.

So we've created a very good team of people looking at unconditional acceptance as the primary way to engage kids. That's our community.

¿ (0955)

The Chair: It sounds like you're doing great work.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: I hope so.

The Chair: I'm sorry we don't have a site visit on here, but maybe we can work on that.

Mr. Réal Ménard: Are we going to visit...?

The Chair: We're going to the Calder Centre, but we're not going to....

[Translation]

A voice: You could come tomorrow.

The Chair: Yes, tomorrow would be a possibility.

[English]

We'll work on that.

Mr. Powell, do you want to wrap up with any comments, or do you just want to engage in the questions and answers?

Rev. Powell: I wouldn't mind saying something now that I can think straight. I'm sorry, at the moment I started to speak I got a headache. The dust....

I'd just like to address the panel. I've been a pastor for 20 years. I had a drinking problem, but I haven't had a drink in about 30 years now. As a pastor, as a worker with people for the last 30 years, I have seen drugs and alcohol take a tremendous toll on people.

There are three things I look at. First is the family. The family to me is the building block of society. That is where we find our security. We learn how to live, move, and trust one another. When that is destroyed there's a lack of trust; it follows and it falls apart.

Second is faith in something beyond ourselves, and understanding that there is a reason why we're here. That gives us a reason to live.

Third is government, and I believe the role of government is to uphold the other two--to uphold family and faith. Faith gives us morality, to know what is right and wrong. I believe the role of government is to enforce that and agree with that.

I'm going to speak from a personal viewpoint for just a moment. Earlier I mentioned bleach. Bleach has a purpose. Without bleach we don't get white sheets. But if you take your sheets and put them in pure bleach, they fall apart; it's a very corrosive agent.

There are things in our society that are very corrosive, such as drugs and alcohol. People use basically because they like the effect, and it becomes a very personal thing. They like what it does to them, but then it begins to eat away at relationships. The family starts to fall apart because it's all about them.

Government comes along, and we can start saying, well, no, this isn't right. The family can say that. Faith can say that. But there has to be some way of backing this up.

Now, I'm just going to give you an example. As a teenager I was a little wild. I didn't have much respect for authority. One of the things I've always appreciated--and I share this--was something that happened on a highway late at night in the Saskatoon vicinity. I can remember sitting in the back seat of a police car having a discussion with a policeman, and I made some smart remark to him. Suddenly I was leaning over the front seat as he massaged my Adam's apple. He began to explain various things, and he ended up by saying, now I've got some punk kid sitting in my back seat mouthing off at me.

I really thought I was going to die that day. To make a long story short, I didn't--obviously. I learned something that day, and that was something called “respect”. I started learning how to control my mouth. I learned how to keep my mouth shut when a policeman approached me. It was “Yes, sir”, and “No, sir”.

Today that policeman would go to jail for something like that. He kept me out of jail. I look at people I've tried to help, and I see it as being a snowball effect. This guy did me a tremendous favour. Today nobody would back him up. The law would not back him up. The government wouldn't back him up. All of a sudden, we have come up with what we call personal rights over community rights.

I say it this way: when it comes to drugs, they have been a tremendously destructive force. To me, what the government needs to do is start giving some enforcement ability. We have a lot of laws on the books that are not enforced, and they could be enforced.

Just as an example, this last weekend we had a girl who passed away as a result of drugs at a rave that took place. People say, well, they can't do anything about it. I'm saying, let's start enforcing some of the laws that are on the books. If we can do that, we'll start saving people, and we'll start seeing a lot more effectiveness.

Once again, what it will do is it will start to bring back the idea that it's not about me; it's not about the individual. I say it this way. It's like the situation with our Constitution. I've always believed that the Constitution should be interpreted in the light of the community, not in the light of the individual. What we're doing today, as I see it, is we keep promoting personal rights over the rights of the many.

I would really like to see the government start doing something: promoting family, promoting faith--when I say “faith”, I'm not talking about any particular faith but something beyond ourselves. We have a purpose for being here and a purpose for living. I like to put it this way. If we're all just evolved swamp gas and we're all here by a cosmic accident, then it doesn't really matter what we're talking about here today. But if we have a purpose and a being, then it's to live beyond ourselves, to see and to look out for one another. If we look out for one another, we will start to see that families will grow. We'll be strengthened. The corrosive agents we see acting in our society will start mending themselves.

I really believe that government has a phenomenal role to play here, and that is in helping the police, helping the family, and helping the courts. Let's enforce it.

À (1000)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Reverend Powell.

Rev. Powell: Thank you.

The Chair: Now I'll turn to the members of Parliament for some questions.

I should issue a fair warning, which is that this committee is very unusual. As a special committee, there is no magic wand and no hard-and-fast positions by different political parties. Members will often ask really probing questions. They will take different positions and different meanings. If you're reading the transcript, you might think, “Huh? The last time that person had a completely different perspective.” So don't make assumptions.

It's a very non-partisan committee. We have tried to operate this way. So far it has been quite successful for us. We really are trying to probe, and there isn't a lot of partisan behaviour.

I'll ask Ms. Skelton to pose some questions. We'll go about ten minutes. While she may ask a question to one of you directly, if somebody else would like to answer, please indicate this and I'll keep track of it as we go through. If you don't want to answer, you don't have to.

Ms. Skelton.

À (1005)

Ms. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Canadian Alliance): First of all, I'd like to say thank you very much for being here today. I came home especially for this drug committee meeting. Mr. White, who is the lead critic, shall we say, and a leading member of the Canadian Alliance was called to Nova Scotia. His mother is very ill, so our prayers are with him today.

It's a pleasure to be here in my home city.

Mr. Armitage, you mentioned something that brought to mind our provincial government. This morning we were talking about the provincial government recently bringing forward this smoking law that stores have to cover up their cigarettes. I'm not taking on the provincial government; this is just an example.

I live in a small community where our grocery store has liquor, cigarettes, and everything. I always laugh, because when we walk into the store, the candy counter is right in front of the door. When you have young children, they run straight for the candy, while the parents get their cigarettes. Next to the store is the large liquor establishment. The provincial government came out with this law where you have to cover up cigarettes. But the liquor isn't covered up. I have a problem with this, and everybody in the community does too. They say, “Why are they forcing us to cover up the cigarettes when we feel liquor is a much bigger problem?”

What do you think about this?

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Just two mornings ago, when I was paying for gasoline, I had an opportunity to talk to a service station attendant. Behind him was the curtain with the covered-up cigarettes. I asked him if it made a difference, from his experience. He said it did in the beginning. In the first week or two their cigarette sales dropped, but now they're right back to where they were before. So I don't know a great deal about the motivation of the government in passing this kind of a law or regulation vis-à-vis smoking.

In the Regina Health District, I know that alcohol and drug services were part of community services, which has public health. The latter took a lead role in developing some of these policies in Regina vis-à-vis smoking in restaurants and public places.

But I'm afraid I don't have any kind of insight or experience when it comes to why they would cover up cigarettes and leave the alcohol exposed.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Do you think it basically goes back to the old theme that everyone buries their head in the sand when it comes to addictions?

There is a famous saying that, “We don't have an alcoholic in our town.” No one will admit it.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Right.

Ms. Carol Skelton: And that's not picking on my town either. But it's just one of those things: it's hard for a person to admit they're an alcoholic.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: With the illness of addictions, that's probably one of the elements at the heart and core of the illness. It's the inability of the individual to recognize that they have a problem.

When we talk about alcohol and drugs, it isn't just with mood-altering substances--like illicit drugs and alcohol--where you have denial, blocked awareness, or inability to see what your behaviour is and what this substance is doing to you. I like to say this to other individuals too.

I believe this case can be made to anyone who smokes cigarettes, and who smokes addictively.

I saw a document recently put out by the Senate regarding their special committee. I had the opportunity in Regina on May 13 to make a presentation to those gentlemen, and I noticed that in one of the handouts it said that anywhere from 30% to 50% of the people who smoke were addicted to cigarettes.

I would say that 99% of the people who smoke are addicted to cigarettes, not 50%. I've only come across one social smoker in my life, and that's my sister-in-law. She can actually take one cigarette and smoke it, and she does that every three or four months. She could probably eat peanuts that way too.

The point I'm making is that it isn't just with alcohol and the list of drugs that we have denial. We have people who smoke, and a case could be made for the gambling phenomenon we have in our society and also for eating disorders. Some people believe that others eat addictively and that they have a problem. Denial is a key part. The point I am trying to make here is, denial just doesn't work when it comes to mood-altering substances. It comes in the area of smoking and eating disorders.

À (1010)

The Chair: Does anyone wish to comment?

Ms. Sandra Lane: I don't know the answer for sure, but I think one of the things that happens with this is that with the legal drinking age being 19, an assumption is made that people wait until they're 19 to purchase alcohol. For the most part that's probably true; you get someone to purchase it for you.

Cigarettes, on the other hand, are being sold to very young people. In my opinion, part of this is that when I walk into my local drug store, I see the cigarettes covered. In places where there are no alcohol sales, places a lot of kids frequent such as the 7-Elevens, etc., more so maybe than the grocery store, they're covered. They're not visible to the young people. Other than that, I don't know.

Maybe I don't want to believe that if people are going to get it, they're going to get it, but I know it happens. Again, it goes back to education, primary prevention, and the whole business, because they're always going to be there. I can't see cigarettes or alcohol going off the market really soon.

Preventing, preventing, preventing: it's about giving people the education. When people understand things, they usually make much wiser choices.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Gary, you talked about the barriers in your community. Can you list some of those?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Certainly food is a barrier. There are barriers to food in our community, to kids having regular, nutritious meals. Transportation is huge. Our kids don't access any other types of services in our community the way other youth or other people might. Most of the services are traditionally out of reach.

For example, if you want to go to a library and you live in Riversdale, for most people it would be quite simple just to get in their car and drive to a library. But several of our families may have two or more children; if you don't have a car, you need to have bus fare, but our parents don't have bus fare.

You need to have child care support if you want to leave your infant with somebody when it's -40^o, which is certainly another barrier. A five- or six-block distance to go for a service is a barrier if you don't have a sleigh or proper winter wear for your kids. If you want to phone somebody, you have to have somebody to phone, and you also have to have a phone. Bus fare can be over $1 per person and could possibly put you up into the $5 range, which is just out of reach for several of our families.

Prior to our being there, it wasn't realistic for several of our kids to access recreational services. There were some but not enough. Now, of course, there's something, but we need more. There are other communities that are only 10 blocks away--Pleasant Hill and St. Mary's--that need another facility of the type we have on the west side. Look at Dundonald, Wedge Road, Confederation, and that whole area. Again, that whole issue around poverty and barriers is moving out to that area.

There are barriers to accessing resources. Television, cable, or even mail and those types of things that families miss are all barriers.

We have a major problem with depression, anxiety, and stuff with our families, and that tends to leave people without energy. I've heard people say it's the parents' responsibility to just get the kids to school. They don't get out of bed to get their kids dressed, feed them, and get them to school. Usually the caregivers are women, and they end up with that responsibility. I know a lot of women who suffer from depression and are bedridden. They can't just get out of bed and get their kids dressed and to school. They suffer from depression as a result of sexual abuse.

So those are all barriers--mental health services, and those types of things. There's everything you could well imagine--weather and all of it.

À (1015)

The Chair: Thank you. There'll be another chance for another round.

[Translation]

Will you be asking your questions in English or in French?

[English]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I will ask my question in French because that's my mother tongue.

[Translation]

The Chair: No problem.

Mr. Réal Ménard: I have four questions: two general questions and two for Gary.

[English]

The Chair: I'm listening with one ear in English and one ear in French. That way I get to practice my skills.

Mr. Réal Ménard: This is Canada. That's the way it's supposed to be.

[Translation]

We went to Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, Burlington and other cities. We have been told that, contrary to what is seen in other cities, there is a greater dependency on alcohol than drugs here. We were told that, according to a study done by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health, 10,000 people had asked for treatment last year, and that a majority of these wanted to deal with alcohol-related problems rather than drug problems. Can you confirm these facts? This is important for our understanding, because the strategy is not the same if one is tackling an alcohol problem rather than a drug problem. Reverend, you began your remarks by saying that you wanted to fight the drug problem, including alcohol. Do you have a good profile to start with?

[English]

The Chair: I'll start with Mr. Armitage and then just work right across the table.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Alcohol is a problem in Saskatchewan, but we also have a drug problem. But when you compare it to what's going on in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, you might say we don't have a drug problem.

For the last three or four years now, Regina has been part of a committee formed by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse called CCENDU, the Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use. The idea behind this particular committee is to go to databases and sources of statistics that are already established in these various communities.

For example, we would go to the coroner's office and get their statistics on alcohol-related deaths and overdoses of other mood-altering substances and we would incorporate them into our report. We would also talk to the police and SGI. We would talk to these organizations that collected information, put it in a report, and send it away. We would combine that report with those of the nine other centres that were part of the community, and then a national report would be published.

I always had mixed feelings when I looked at our statistics, in comparison.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I do not want to interrupt you, but that is not the kind of information I am seeking. This is what I am trying to understand.

In Halifax, they have a particular problem with drug use. When we undertook this work, as a committee, we met with public servants who were in touch with aboriginal people, and we heard about certain communities that have gas and glue sniffing problems. I would like you to give me an outline of what is particular to Saskatoon, in one or two sentences. It is Saskatchewan's biggest city; a million people live there. I am trying to get a mental image of it. Gary told us a lot, but I would like to hear in a sentence or two what goes on here in terms of drug use. I would like your community's characteristics to be reflected in our report.

À (1020)

[English]

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Okay. I'm not good on short answers.

The point I was trying to make was that we have confirmed we have a drug problem, but, to answer your question specifically, alcohol is still the number one drug problem in Saskatchewan. As a matter of fact, I would even venture to say that alcohol is still the number one drug problem in the world, and that we've spent a lot of time, energy, and money talking about illicit drugs. Alcohol still causes our society more damage.

If you want to take a look at a second substance that may be causing problems here, in Regina we have a serious problem with Ritalin and Talwin. They take it and crush it. It's a poor man's version of heroin. That information came out of our CCENDU report. So alcohol, and marijuana, Talwin, and Ritalin are the three drugs in Regina. I'm sure the provincial government would have better statistics than that.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: All right. Before...

The Chair: Would you like an answer from the other witnesses?

Mr. Réal Ménard: No. I am going to ask a second question and afterwards it will be Gary's turn.

One thing that surprised me somewhat this morning was the fact that half the panel, in this case two people out of four, was clearly challenging the harm-reduction initiative and restated their belief in the strategy of abstinence. As I speak to this issue, I am not trying to make a moral point, because morals are a very personal thing, and there are a whole slew of human conditions that can push people into drug use. I don't want to look at things from the moral perspective; I want to understand what pushes people into becoming users.

However, as stakeholders in the area of public health, are you trying to make the committee understand that your spokespeople, who make the decisions with communities, are challenging the harm reduction strategy? I will come back to the point of individual incentives; I feel that it is important that we clearly understand your position as public health representatives. Are you challenging the interventions that are based on the harm reduction strategy? For example, would we find needle exchange sites in Saskatoon?

[English]

Ms. Sandra Lane: Absolutely. I hope you didn't hear that from me, that we challenge harm reduction. I believe in the continuum of prevention, early intervention and tertiary treatment. And that's a continuum. You'll hear more about this, probably, from some of the people you'll be hearing from in the next couple of days, that we work very closely with needle exchange programs. We work very closely with an outreach program that makes sure that people who are using some of the injection drugs are kept safe. We work very closely with lots of programs that are harm reduction programs to keep young people safe.

I'm quite involved with graduation programs that are coming up now, where we do not want young people to die. People say they know they're going to drink and drug. Do I want my grandson with a group of people who will end up there? No, I would sooner keep him safe. Call it what you want; it's harm reduction.

I would sooner have a designated driver drive a car if the other people are drunk. Call it harm reduction. Call it keeping people safe. It doesn't matter what you call it.

I reiterate--I'm getting excited now because this is something I feel very strongly about--we meet people where they're at. This is going to be my long answer, but we meet people where they're at in their recovery process. Some people today may not be prepared to be absent for the rest of their life. Do I want them to be safe and reduce the harm to themselves and others? Absolutely, I do.

We work very closely with the public policy around harm reduction, so that when I'm in a community that is part of my work. Because of the nature of my background with addiction services for a number of years, my hope is that I have someone who may need to be using a harm reduction program or whatever. Perhaps in the long run that person is going to be an absent person. Wouldn't that be my goal for someone on methadone? But if it's not, then so be it. I cannot be God and judge what this person needs at that time in their life.

That's my lecture for today. Thank you.

À (1025)

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I have two questions for Gary. Your clientele is not only made up of aboriginal people. Your services are available to anyone, is that not that right?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Anyone can come to White Buffalo Youth Lodge.

[English]

We call it status blind. So every child can come into the facility. The people who work there come from all backgrounds. We have staff from first nations. We have non-aboriginal staff, staff from farm communities. So all kids can come into the facility. However, because of demographics and where we're located, 99.9% of the children who come into the facility are mainly first nations and Métis children.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: Speaking about yourself, you said something very interesting that I took note of, and that I feel is very important. I think you are a little younger than me. You said that when you were using, you did so for various reasons. You gave four psychological incentives for using drugs, which we must bear in mind.

You said that it gave you an identity, that it allowed you to feel popular amongst your peers, that it gave you some self-esteem and that it was a part of the pop music scene. It think it is important to understand the psychological reasons that makes people use drugs.

Are you under the impression that today, in 2002, the four reasons for using drugs that you gave would be as relevant today as they were 20 years ago? Do you feel that people use today for the same reasons: to be popular, because they are in distress, because they have identity issues? I do not know if the music is still relevant, but do you have the impression that the same reasons drive the young people you see to use drugs?

[English]

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Oui. Some middle-class kids use them for those reasons. Some of our kids use them to medicate. Some kids use them because they're curious. Some kids use them because their parents aren't home. For our kids, some treatment-based programs are not appropriate because we take them for 28 days and we put them into a facility and give them three meals a day, exercise, lots of rest. We take them from the facility and drop them back into their own community with all the problems they had before. They're back in the community with poverty and all of those issues.

So certain models work well for middle-class kids. Certain middle-class kids use them for certain reasons; our kids use them for other reasons. Kids who are very wealthy use them for certain reasons. It all depends, and every child uses them for a different reason, but I still think today that there are certain kids, yes, who use them because it's part of the culture, it's part of the subculture.

[Translation]

There is also their music and their sports. A lot of young people who play soccer and football

[English]

use drugs because they're in the room.

[Translation]

I played soccer.

[English]

Mr. Réal Ménard: To become stronger....

[Translation]

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Yes, that is true. They take steroids.

[English]

So a lot of the kids use drugs for that reason. I see young men where I work out at the gym. They talk about wanting to be strong right now and so they use steroids. And they can get steroids. There are people in certain gyms who are selling steroids and pills.

[Translation]

A lot of young hockey players

[English]

use intravenous drugs for steroids. They have parties. They have--I forget what they call them, cocktails or something. They shoot up with steroids to become strong because their role on the team is to fight and to be stronger and bigger, because that's where it's at on television and that's what it means to be good.

Sometimes if you go into locker rooms, a lot of the young people are smoking and those types of things. It's all part of what they see. It's still in music--very well alive in music, as it was when we were kids, listening to The Doors and the resurgence of all the old music from back in my generation in the 1980s. It was very popular--Jimi Hendrix, KISS. And drugs--certainly it does promote it, but whether you have the strength to resist, that's different. But it's so hard for kids.

À (1030)

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: How old are you?

[English]

Mr. Gary Beaudin: I'm 33.

Mr. Réal Ménard: You're the same age as me.

The Chair: Ms. Lane.

Ms. Sandra Lane: Could I just say one thing? I think one of the things we need to remember is that we are a very quick-fix society. We want something very fast. We don't want to have pain. I see people raising little children, and we don't want to hurt for a minute. We help people not to hurt.

By the time the young people are 13, 14, 15 or 16 years of age--and I speak mostly for young people because that's where my work is right now. I don't know about your adolescence, but I know it is not the most pleasant time for a lot of young people, and when that becomes painful for whatever reason, we need to fix it. We need to not hurt, and there's always something there that will help me to not have to hurt. Whether that's my self-confidence, my self-esteem, my inadequacies, my identity, my ability to be able to socialize or just grow up, there's something there. It's on the corner; it's in the locker at school; it's wherever it is.

We have learned that we need to fix it, and it's fast, and I think that's an important part of getting caught up in it.

The Chair: Mr. Armitage.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: This is not a very technical answer, but it's the whole element of experimentation when you're 12, 13 or 14 years old. Kids just want to know, what does that stuff do to you? That's one of the main reasons that people will start using, and I think in the prevention activities, if you could come up with a program so that you could take away that desire of young children to experiment, you'd be very successful.

The Chair: They should experiment with safer things.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Right.

The Chair: After Mr. Armitage, it's Mr. Beaudin.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: I just want to make a comment regarding abstinence, because I'm a strong believer in abstinence, and the reason I am is because I believe addiction is an illness. I believe when a person takes mood-altering substances into their body, that's the illness, and for me to start to recover from this illness, I have to get clean and sober.

It has absolutely nothing to do with morals. It has to do with the physiology and the chemistry of the addicted person, because I believe that's the illness of addiction. The chemistry of the addicted person has changed over the years. They cannot tolerate; they cannot use mood-altering substances safely. So it has nothing to do with morality.

The Chair: We'll have to come back in another round.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I have a brief comment to make. It was my birthday last week. Incidentally, I did not receive a card from you. I was rather disappointed.

In my opinion, abstinence can be somewhat dangerous. As members of Parliament, we cannot pass legislation telling people that they have to live successful lives. This is not something we can legislate. There are a whole series of factors that can drive people into drug use, and we have to understand the triggers, understand what pushes people in that direction.

In my family, there were five children. I come from an average family in my neighbourhood. None of the five children were drug users. In Hochelaga--Maisonneuve, in the house next door, there were three children. They all used drugs. We went to the same public schools. We had roughly the same family income. There are therefore very personal deciding factors that result in people turning to drugs. As legislators, we can offer treatment and public resources to those who are in need. That is what we can do. In my opinion, abstinence may be appropriate to a portion of the population, but it cannot suit a majority of people. In that sense I feel that there is a moral issue. I am not against it, but I feel that it cannot be an answer from the point of view of the legislators.

[English]

The Chair: That was not a quick comment. You're out for another round.

We'll go to Mr. Beaudin, briefly, and then I'll go back to Mr. Armitage. Then I'm going to Mr. LeBlanc.

À (1035)

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Prevention is definitely where it's at. The difficulty is that if you want to keep your kids out of drugs and you have the money to put your kids in soccer, and sports, and music, and all of these things, it's certainly much easier than a person who's working poor, or on assistance, where most of these types of services that keep kids busy.... You can put a kid in a program every day of the week. That's certainly going to keep them out of a lot of things, and keep you involved, when you're driving them and taxi-ing.

But that's very expensive. It's easier to cope when you have a little more money. It certainly is. That's just the way it is. It makes life a little easier when you have a car and things like that. So it certainly makes things a little easier.

The Chair: We'll have to introduce you to some high-flying hockey players with lots of money, who we met, who were big druggies. There's the other side of the problem, unfortunately, for some people.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: There certainly is, but when we're talking about children, small children--

The Chair: They're all individuals.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: I know with my kids I can be involved and keep them in programs that keep them away from things, but it's easier, it's a little easier.... When you don't have anything at all, when you don't have food, when drugs are right out there, that is food sometimes.

The Chair: Mr. Armitage, briefly, on the abstinence issue.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: I am not suggesting abstinence for the population. I am not saying none of you should drink. What I'm saying is that if you've gone to a professional and you've been assessed as addicted, I'm suggesting you need to be abstinent if you want to get a handle and turn your life around.

Research shows that anywhere from 10% to 12% of the people in this room, the people in this city, the people in this country, are addicted to these drugs, and to suggest anything other than abstinence for an addicted person I think is a death sentence for them.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll join you in saying, Carol, that we're happy you joined us today. We're glad to be in your home town. Thank you for coming with us. Our thoughts are with Randy White as well. That's a good point to be noted. He was on his way to join us in Edmonton and then had to leave for Nova Scotia. So we're certainly thinking about him.

[Translation]

Réal, I hope you received the birthday card that I sent you for your 50^th birthday. You turned 50, but even if you had turned 40, you would still be six years older than me. Congratulations, Réal, and thank you for being here.

[English]

Thank you, all of you, very much for your presentations. I thought they were interesting. I learned a great deal from each one of your interventions.

Madam Chair, I have four very specific questions, one for each of the panellists. I could perhaps pose all the questions, and then you may wish to comment on a question that I asked one of your colleagues.

Mr. Armitage, you talked about the adequacy of treatment centres as an issue, or something that we need to look at. We've certainly heard that in many cities and from many people we've met. There's a shortage of beds. You noted that. We've seen that across the country, and it was more dramatic in some cases than others.

You talked about comprehensiveness, I think, and duration. I don't know a great deal about different treatment programs. I've learned from various witnesses. I'd be interested to hear your view on a 28-day program versus some places we're told are trying to go to 50-day programs. We met some in British Columbia, I think, where they had a six-month program. I'd be interested to hear the problems with duration. I find it hard that somebody who's highly addicted in 21 days--I think it was Gary who said it--goes in, has a period of treatment, and returns to a situation that can perhaps lead to relapse. I'm interested in the duration.

Ms. Lane, some people have advocated that we look at decriminalizing marijuana as part of this exercise. I think there's a big difference between decriminalizing and legalizing it. Possession of marijuana can be decriminalized--or the criminal element removed from possession of it--but remain an illegal or controlled substance.

I would be interested to hear your views about whether or not you believe marijuana is an addictive substance. One of you talked about the people who come in and are heavily addicted to marijuana. We hear some people say that marijuana is not something that can be easily addictive. I'd be interested to hear your view on this.

You also said that as the drinking age goes up, there's a change in drinking pattern. I'd be interested to hear how you see this manifesting itself.

[Translation]

Mr. Beaudin, I congratulate you on your French.

[English]

Gary, your French is admirable.

[Translation]

A voice: [Editor's note: Inaudible].

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: No, no, congratulations.

[English]

With a name like Beaudin....

À (1040)

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Actually, I learned it in school.

The Chair: In Alberta?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Yes.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Congratulations.

I'd also be interested to hear, from your perspective working with youth, how you would see the question of decriminalizing marijuana. With many of the youth you work with at the White Buffalo Lodge, is the fact that there's a criminal sanction to using marijuana a factor at all? Would you see increased use if there were no criminal sanction? Again, I still think it would be an illegal substance. This is not necessarily my own view; this is a view that people push at us. I would be curious to hear your reaction.

Reverend Powell, we may disagree on personal versus collective rights. My own view is that majorities don't need protection. I worry about protecting those who are perhaps small minorities. I know Paddy would cut us off from that long discussion.

However, you did say that we should apply the law. I'd be curious to hear what you mean by applying the law. For example, I think it's an aberration that there's a law on the books and the police forces choose not to enforce it. In my view, the police are there to enforce the laws that Parliament passes. If there's a problem with the law, Parliament should change the law, not a police officer on the beat who decides he doesn't agree with the law and won't therefore charge a person. Some of this is going on. I think it might mean that Parliament needs to look at some legislative reform.

When you say “apply the law”, would you be in favour of stronger sentences for drug offences, for example? Many people feel that the judicial system is too lenient on many drug charges. I'd be interested if you would be in favour of mandated treatment. Should somebody--perhaps a hard-core addict who is involved in criminal behaviour and who is convicted--be sentenced to a treatment facility?

What about incarcerating pregnant women who are severe addicts and engaging in destructive behaviour that might affect their unborn child? I remember some cases--perhaps in this province or in Manitoba--where pregnant women were incarcerated because the judicial system felt that was the only way to protect the unborn child.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

The Chair: Just to clarify, that was pregnant women with an addiction problem.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: We had a witness yesterday who thought we should incarcerate pregnant women altogether.

The Chair: You're not sure it was the questioner?

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: That isn't something that I subscribe to.

At what stage would you incarcerate them?

The Chair: Mr. Armitage, you're up first.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: In response to the question on treatment, when you start the process, an accurate assessment has to be made of the individual. Not everybody who presents to an assessor is at the same point in the progression of the illness. Some are sicker than others. So you try to make the match, based on the assessment and the individual's characteristics and circumstances. As Sandy mentioned before--and I agree with that--you try to meet the person where they're at and develop a treatment strategy to help them the most.

There are some recovery-prone people who come to the realization they are addicted. They present and are assessed as addicted. It may only be necessary to refer them to a self-help group, whether it be Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous. That may the very last time you see that person because they're off on their own recovery, whereas the next person may need some professional counselling. They may need a time-out away from the circumstances and environment where there's heavy drug use. They may need to be taken out of that and given the opportunity to develop some treatment strategies and make major changes in their life.

We've heard Gary talking about life skills. It would be nice to have a facility, not necessary a bed, whereby you could keep that individual away from the negative effects of their environment but give them the opportunity for long-term training, education--the information they need to start making the changes in their recovery process.

As it stands right now, in the last ten years Canada has followed the way of the United States. We have moved away from in-patient treatment and are relying more on out-patient, where there is a large number of individuals. There is an analogy I make to my friends in the mental health field. To be able to say we have a system to treat people who are mentally ill--not addicted--and not have enough beds to treat the chronically ill, who may be a danger to themselves or society and need to be taken in.... The same is true in the addiction field. I believe we need more beds to be able to help those individuals who are in need of that kind of service.

You're right, I believe there's a treatment centre in Quebec...six months, nine months. Again, just because you have a treatment facility that runs for x number of weeks or months doesn't necessarily mean the person has to stay there. If they progress, learn the lessons, get involved in their own recovery, and do the things required of them, they might not have to. As it stands right now in Saskatchewan, we only have the 28-day or 21-day program.

I feel we need to give a little more creative thought to having a wider range of options for addicted people. If we had that, we would be able to do a better job of treating these people.

À (1045)

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Lane.

Ms. Sandra Lane: Can I just say a couple of things about this too? As you know, I probably will.

When we have people in a treatment program, I like to call it recovery, and recovery is not in a bed. There is a mindset quite often amongst people who think having somebody in a bed will fix them. It doesn't work like that. Gary mentioned putting people back into their communities after they'd been there 28 days, six weeks, or six months. A girl said it to me really well one day. She said, “It's like falling off a cliff. You put us out now and things are even worse when we return because we are supposed to have the skills to be able to deal with everything. I have three preschool children and a husband with no job who's drinking. I have a fridge full of beer and no food.” She has many of the things Gary spoke to and now she's supposed to be fixed.

Recovery is a long-term process. It's lifelong for people who are addicted. In that process, as much can happen on an out-patient or day-patient basis as ever happens in an in-patient setting.

I think there is a need for all, and it is based on assessment. In our province--I can only speak for this province--we have placed so much emphasis on residential services for people, we miss the boat on providing those same services--biologically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually--on an out-patient basis where those people are going to be living. Recovery occurs in a community, not in a bed.

I just needed to say that because I really believe it. Geographical reasons in Saskatchewan are good reasons for residential services. Duly diagnosed clients are good reasons for residential treatment, and relapse-prone clients, such as Lyell mentioned, clients who are not recovery-prone but are more in need of something more intensive for a period of time, with a connection made to a community where recovery will take place. I just needed to say this because I feel strongly about it when I work with people.

The other thing I feel strongly about--and I'll just mention it here--is in our province we have a fair number of adult beds, so to speak, but not for young people. I had an opportunity the other day, in an attempt of my own, to get a young person to detox, but with no success. As I said, I've been around for 30 years and figure I should have an in somewhere, but I could not get this young person into a safe environment. It was a terrible feeling. The parents actually drove him a couple of hundred kilometres, only to be refused at the door.

For young people, we do not have a lot of services that can take them out of a crisis situation when alcohol or other drugs are related. I have a concern there, and I have been on committees that have written documents asking for services to stabilize a young person while that assessment is done, because they're often on the move. It's the nature of the client. We don't have something for them fairly quickly, whereas for adults we have several places they can go. I needed to say that.

As for decriminalization, I don't know. That's a really good answer, isn't it? My concern always is with the kid I'm looking at across my desk. You ask, is marijuana addictive? Addiction has psychological and physical aspects. People withdraw. They have a physical withdrawal, and this includes a whole lot of things that we probably won't get into here. It's a physical dependency on that drug. The psychological, of course, is that their mind can think of nothing other than getting the drug, using the drug, and what is going to happen. That sort of composes our definition.

I have seen people who cannot quit using it. Five days, a kid said the other day, and he was going crazy with the craving for that drug. Only five days. From my expertise, and there's no doubt in my mind, an addiction is when I see the results of a drug where a kid goes into a grade 9 class on the honour roll and comes out in grade 10 not accepted into any school in our city because of marijuana use. There are terrific problems with it.

My concern around decriminalization--and I have a really hard time with it; I really get on the fence--is that on one side I don't want to see kids get a criminal record. I know the numbers that are using it. But on the other side of it, when a kid comes in and says, “Well, they're going to decriminalize anyway, so I may as well use it”, then I have concern. It seems to free up the idea that it's okay. So coming from that aspect, I say no. And I go back and forth.

As an addictions person and a worker in the field for a long period of time, I really have different thoughts. I talked to a police officer, who you're going to hear from tomorrow, and the kid is saying, “Come on now, they use it for medical purposes. They're going to decriminalize it and it'll probably be legal, so what's the big deal?” They're out of school, out of home, out of job, out of money, out of everything, owing a whole lot.

That's not a good answer, but I guess that's the way it is. Coming from the kids' point of view, no, I would say not.

What else did you ask? A higher drinking age. Studies and some of the research that is done around cigarette smoking and other drug use.... I would say here that these are what police officers and ourselves call the gateway to a lot of other drugs. We don't have a lot of young people coming into our offices and saying, “Gee, we started using heroin when we were 13”. They'll usually say, “I started smoking cigarettes and I started having a few drinks, and then I smoked some dope and then I needed a little more”. So often these are gateway drugs.

One of the things I believe.... I can't speak for the studies that were done, except for one with the Saskatchewan Institute on Prevention of Handicaps that talked about the fact that when the drug age is lowered or raised, there's a change in the age of the person using that drug. If the age is moved to 21, it would go up to 17 or 18.

À (1050)

I have no idea exactly how that's working now. I had some material I was going to bring, and then I thought, well, no, I always haul around a bunch of stuff and never use it.

When I was a kid and drinking--and, God, that was so long ago that somebody is going to ask if there was dirt back then--the drinking age was 21. At 18 and 19 many kids would start. Then it came down. Just from a personal perspective, I can remember that happening at 19, but now you'll see it at 16, 17, and 18.

There are a lot of studies that have been done around that. In one in the States they followed it very closely and then moved it from 18 or 19 back up to 21.

À (1055)

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Beaudin.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: If we decriminalize it, does that mean we're going to start seeing commercials for marijuana during hockey games and at times like that? Maybe we need to criminalize cigarettes and alcohol--I'm being facetious.

Our kids use every day. It's just a part of life for so many of the young people we see, those at 13, 14, 16, or 17. I personally feel that decriminalizing something like that would create a mindset in young people that now it's okay. It's quite simple. It would be just like anything else now. That's the way they feel about alcohol: now it's okay. It's socially unacceptable when you're 14 or 15; you should hide it, but it's okay to do it. When you're 17, 18, or 19, then it's a little less so, and by the time you're of age it's okay. It's like anything else. That's all it would do.

I know several of our kids do not access treatment facilities. Most of the kids we see don't access traditional addiction-type services, either out-patient or in-patient. We know there are a lot of kids who go, but most of them aren't successful. The majority of the kids we see in our facility don't access services like that.

Certainly, I think it would just be another way they would think it was socially acceptable. They don't understand the complexity of decriminalizing something or making it legal. To them, it's all about the image of something, how we as a community perceive drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes.

Right now we have 8- and 9-year-olds who smoke, and they're addicted to tobacco and nicotine. It's no longer at a point where it's fun or they're doing it to be cool; they're actually addicted.

Alcohol is expensive, so if it isn't beer or whatever, there are certainly other substances that people, including kids, are drinking. Sniffing is a big thing, as drugs are expensive too.

Certain things like marijuana can be expensive. Pills, Ritalin...sometimes you can get those things more easily. You can get Gravol over the counter, and it's not that hard. You need to be an adult to get it. You have to go to the pharmacy, but kids take that stuff too. Again, it's all about medicating.

I hope that answers your question. I think it certainly would be a factor. I feel it would be a factor if you decriminalized it, just in how they perceive things socially, how they perceive the actual drugs, because they already look at tobacco, alcohol, and all that in a certain way. It is acceptable. It's all over the place. It's all over TV. It's everywhere. Everybody does it. People who say to kids, don't smoke, smoke themselves. People who say to kids, don't drink, drink themselves.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Powell.

Rev. Powell: You started asking about enforcement. I gather that would come under the Young Offenders Act and under Parliament. One of the things I see, referring to when I say “enforcing the laws”, is that there are a number of things that happen. People get arrested, yet there's no real penalty any more. Is that the policeman on the beat? Not usually, and I find that normally is the chord.

One thing I use as an example, and this goes back a number of years--and we did talk about this when you asked a question--is that there was a gentleman who was arrested for impaired driving because he was driving at over 0.08. He blew 0.3 or something. He was found not guilty because he was too drunk to understand his rights when they were read to him. It went to the Supreme Court and that was upheld. So your right and my right to drive on the road safely is impaired because his right to drive, however he wants to, supercedes that.

But I often see that what we're trying to do is make a “one size fits all” answer. You asked what I think about pregnant women. A pregnant woman who is addicted is a threat to her child. You also used terminology that the Constitution should protect the right of the minority. I would see a child who is endangered, whose very life is endangered... I think then probably the state has the right to step in and say, whoa, for a period of time we're going to protect this child. At that point, then, yes, you're saying, you can't drink; you can't do drugs. You're putting them in an environment. Are you legislating that they can never do that? No, but there is a period of time during which you are protecting the child.

That's where I see that the role of government is to protect. When it comes to drugs, when it comes to alcohol and a lot of that, it's such a pervasive thing, and it undercuts the fabric of our society.

People have talked about this here, and I sort of see it this way. Some people, as Mr. Armitage talked about, will come in, maybe just need a little bit of help, and they can go on. Some people don't want to change. Some people, if you give them some incentive, will. Some, if you give them a little more incentive, will. But I really believe that's where we need to have something that can show us there is a standard, and I believe that's what government is for.

I hope that has answered your questions. Thank you.

Á (1100)

The Chair: Thank you.

We'll now suspend for a few minutes.

À (1058)

Á (1113)

The Chair: Thank you very much.

I'll now go to Ms. Skelton. Then I'll ask some questions and we'll go to you, Mr. Ménard.

Á (1115)

Ms. Carol Skelton: I want to ask you one basic, very important thing. Do you think Canada's drug strategy is working? Do you think the provincial and federal governments work together well?

Are you finding the emphasis is missing on the front-line workers and programming? I don't know how to say this politely, but do you think it's top-heavy, instead of going to the field people and the people who really need the help? Does anybody understand what I'm saying here?

Á (1120)

The Chair: Would anyone like to take a stab at an answer?

Why don't I start with Ms. Lane, then Mr. Armitage, and anyone else.

Ms. Sandra Lane: I'm not sure how to respond. I can only speak for this health district and how our services are offered here.

In the past few years we have begun to work very closely with other services, so we have an awful lot more impact on the individuals we work with. We work very closely with the police, mental health services, and public health services. So at the grassroots level, with the front-line staff, there is more power than I ever remembered. We used to sort of turf out the certain areas we worked in.

Other people can probably speak to the bigger picture, but right now we are not top-heavy. At the grassroots level, a fair amount of emphasis is put on the needs of the people who are working with the individuals right now. There was a time, I guess, when I would have said differently, having worked in the field, but right at the present time, the emphasis is very much on the front line.

Somebody else can probably talk better about the bigger picture.

The Chair: Mr. Armitage, do you also want to comment? You don't have to.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: I have some personal opinions. If we as a country want to take a look at a model that's working, we should look at other jurisdictions, other countries. In my prepared remarks this morning I talked about Sweden. They're getting results.

I don't see the results the drug strategy would like to be able to report on; consequently, I think it needs to be reviewed. There are certain aspects of the whole approach that need to be changed.

For those of you who golf, I make this analogy. If you're a slicer and have a really good one, but it's just a little bit off the mark, the farther out you go, the farther off the mark you get. That's the sense I have with the Canadian drug strategy.

I think new energy and new leadership has to be put into this approach, to ward off some of the possible negative results of what we're doing right now. It really concerns me. We talk here about lowering the standards, lowering the bar, and it's okay to do this, but we're just going to have serious problems down the road.

I hope this committee will make some really straightforward and firm recommendations to get this whole question of drug treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention back on track, because I think it's off the rails.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Do you think the drug strategy we have right now is working? Do you feel that the provincial and federal governments are helping you the way they should, and are working close enough together? Do you work closely with your community here in Saskatoon, or are you an entity all to yourself?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: I think the drug strategy certainly works for some kids and individuals, but not everybody, of course. When you're working with different people, in different areas, with different socio-economic issues, you need to adjust the way you deliver information. That just makes sense.

The kids and families we work with don't necessarily respond to ads in commercials and posters. They respond to preventive programming.

What most of our kids really need are some major preventive-type dollars. If you look at the proportion of treatment-based kids...most of our kids are heading towards a way leading to crime. Several of our kids are engaged in Kilburn Hall, and these types of facilities, whether for treatment or for whatever it might be. But what a lot of our kids really need is one person in their life who will accept them unconditionally and provide them with some mentorship.

I can't speak for this community. I used to work in Calgary. It was the same in a lot of the different places I've worked in.

When kids--and especially boys--are on their own and haven't yet got into any issues...when they do need resources and help, it's not available for them. But the minute they get into trouble, or some sort of issue, they're in court. Then people are coming up to them, giving them cards, and saying, “Hi, I'm your new youth worker... I'm your new social worker... I'm your new addictions worker”. While it's not too late, at that point, they're well on their way...

To try to find services in the community for kids who aren't in trouble, who don't have child welfare status, and who don't have guardianship orders is just about impossible. This is especially the case for 16-year-old boys or kids with difficult behaviours. I see a lot of professionals who are only going to work with kids who behave well, with good kids in programs. The minute they become difficult, belligerent, or have major behavioural problems, like attention deficit disorder or FAE and these types of things, some professionals don't want them in the program. I'm not saying everybody does this. So they un-invite them, because they think it's good for themselves. Their attitude is, “Well, you're causing problems, so you'll need to leave”.

We've had quite a lot of involvement with Premier Calvert, who supports our program. We've had lots of support from our mayor, and from individuals who we didn't ever think would support us.

Carol, you've been in our facility twice. You've shown an interest yourself by saying “I want to see what you guys do here”. Not everybody does this.

Á (1125)

Ms. Carol Skelton: Can I ask a question?

I know there's a certain stage where you have to put a child in detox. Do you get them at this stage? Have you got some place to put a child?

We used to have White Spruce Youth Treatment Centre in Saskatchewan. We are talking about youth beds. Do you have any place to put a child who really needs to be put in detox?

Ms. Sandra Lane: Calder Centre has a treatment program. It is what's called an adolescent treatment program. If you have a young person who needs to be stabilized in detox, there are very few spots.

Ms. Carol Skelton: How many beds are there?

Ms. Sandra Lane: Twelve at Calder.

Ms. Carol Skelton: That's for the whole province?

Ms. Sandra Lane: That's basically for the whole province.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Twelve youth beds for the whole province.

Ms. Sandra Lane: On the odd occasion, a detox setting developed to treat adults will take a kid. But is it the right place for a kid? Probably not. Do we have another spot for them? No.

You'll hear from Blair Buchholz this afternoon. But the Calder Centre will take a young person in. What do you do otherwise? Then we talk about a specific amount of time for a treatment program. This kid is in detox, when they need to be in a recovery type of program.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Gary, what do you do with the child? If it gets to that, do you send them to Calder?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: The reality is most of our kids will never end up at that point. They're functioning and using at a different stage. It involves so much....

Ms. Carol Skelton: So you get them right from age zero to--

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Seventeen.

In special situations, for the most part we can work intensely with the youth and get them to a treatment facility. But we would certainly have to do a lot of groundwork prior to that.

Follow-up care is another issue. I don't want to build mountains, but they certainly need follow-up care.

We get our funding from Heritage Canada through the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centre Initiative. We operate on a small, $400,000 a year, basis. We've had days where we have 150 kids.

In relation to what money is spent on treating the same kids.... Our kids go into Kilburn and various treatment facilities for legal issues and all those types of things. What certain other facilities spend is huge compared to what we spend. We don't spend anything, but we get 100 kids in our facility a day, and some days more. We see a lot of kids. With staffing and some money, district health puts in about $196,000 or $186,000 annually.

What we could do with another small amount of money, $200,000 or whatever it be, is stay open until 2 or 3 in the morning, as opposed to 10:30, and that way our kids don't have to go home. For a lot of the kids, it's not the best place to be. That's why they're out on the streets. If we could keep them here until 2 or 3 in the morning, that's the ideal situation. Then they're in school and they're back in our facility again after school. That's the direction I think we would want to take.

Á (1130)

Ms. Carol Skelton: I have a really quick question. You get your funding from Heritage Canada?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Yes.

Ms. Carol Skelton: Interesting.

The Chair: Why doesn't it say that on the brochure?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: It should on the back.

The Chair: Okay. Saskatoon Tribal Council....

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Oh, it probably just talks about the partners. We were running out of room. We might not have put that on there because we don't know that we're getting funding after this year, and that's been an issue for us. We don't know that it's continued. We don't know that it's going to be that same amount. The initiative is actually over, and we're worried.

Ms. Carol Skelton: And that was a one-time grant, wasn't it?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: It was a three-year initiative. A certain amount comes into the city.

So we took the risk and we partnered with District Health and the city and Métis nations, and we took a risk of building this facility in hopes that it would become a bit of an essential service so that at the end of that, people are saying, “Wow, we need this place; we need to find other sources or continued funding”. But as I said, we're at the end of our funding cycle, so we don't know what's going to happen now.

The Chair: Mr. Armitage.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Can I ask Gary a question? I don't know whether that's--

The Chair: Sure. It's highly unusual, but go ahead. We're flexible.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Okay, good.

Do you receive any money from the federal government as far as Indian Affairs is concerned?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: That's all on-reserve stuff. Indian Affairs deals specifically with on-reserve stuff. That's a huge political issue. Our funding comes from Heritage for a multi-service youth facility type of initiative, but they're specifically on reserve. Our kids are all urban or off-reserve kids. So those are two different--

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Don't they move back and forth?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Yes, certainly they do. You figured it out.

The Chair: Lyell in his next career will be helping you write grant applications.

That does bring us very nicely to a question. Again, this panel is focused on education and prevention, and we have other panels that will focus on some of the other components.

Canadians like to think we have a balanced strategy--and balanced means in terms of our approach and our money and what have you. Yet the Auditor General identified that at the federal level we spend 95% on supply reduction and just 5% on demand reduction. Part of that is because, unlike Sweden, we are a federation, and a lot of the demand reduction strategies are health and education related, so those are carried out by the provinces. We have actually asked all the provincial health ministers to report back to us, and hopefully they'll be able to come up with some numbers and calculate what they're doing on the demand reduction side. Again, there will be some supply reduction, because, depending on the province, there are municipal and provincial police. So they would have some on the supply reduction side as well.

Just looking at your knowledge of what's being spent out there, you guys are the prevention, the demand reduction side. Are we doing enough? Mr. Armitage, in your comments you implied that we're not, and that would be fairly consistent with what we have heard across the country. Who's best to deliver that?

Clearly, Ms. Lane, you're delivering programs right in schools and through the work you do with the district health council. But are there additional resources?

A couple of people have talked about consistent messaging and overlapping messaging. Clearly, Mr. Beaudin, your kids have some different avenues to receiving messages. What are some of those components?

Is there a program in this province where every child gets at least some exposure to healthy choice, anti-risk, or drug education? In certain provinces it is included right across the board and in other provinces it's not. The provinces think they have it, but the kids tell us they don't. What is your impression of what is going on?

My other question, one from a provincial perspective, concerns what we heard from at least one person yesterday. In the Northwest Territories, I believe, they reported that health and social services are jurisdictionally joined so that the government is able to deliver the kind of programming you're doing, Mr. Beaudin, which is really a mix of health and social services. It's keeping people fed, and it's also creating a safe environment and all those kinds of things. Sometimes when departments divide up things too much, you don't get that consistent messaging. This is a smaller province. Is there a much more coordinated effort, or could there be?

I'll start with you, Mr. Armitage.

Á (1135)

Mr. Lyell Armitage: I'll just give you a brief history lesson. In the early nineties, when the government decided they were going to do away with the Saskatchewan Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission because they were reforming the way health care was going to be delivered in this province, they formed 32 health districts. They took all the addiction services that were at one time under the auspices of the commission and gave them to the respective health districts, so in essence what you had was 32 commissions. We had 32 policies, procedures, and ways to interpret them.

But the point I want to make--

The Chair: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but did they have some kind of provincially mandated guidelines, or was it done so they could find local solutions?

Mr. Lyell Armitage: We took the policies and procedures of SADAC, which had been in place for a number of years, and each of the districts did their own rewrite of them.

But the problem as I see it is this--and Sandy would agree with this, I'm sure; there aren't many things Sandy and I agree on, but I'm sure this is one thing she's going to agree with. The budget of SADAC in 1993, when it was done away with, was approximately $16 million. Prevention and training had an exclusive department within the organization, and their budget was over $1 million. When the dust settled and the districts got all these addiction services, there wasn't a nickel left on the table for prevention and training. Am I right?

That is one of the concerns we have here today. When Carol phoned me and asked me if I could be on treatment or should I be on that.... I think we have to get back to the basics in this province and in Canada. That's where we need to have the leadership for a drug strategy, at the federal level, to be able to have a consistent message. It isn't happening right now, Madam Chairperson; it's just not happening.

If you're lucky enough to get it in one district, that's good, but there are lots of districts. They take the money and they use it for counselling. There just aren't the dollars. It's one of the things we've encouraged the government to do, to try to find new resources, but it just hasn't happened.

The Chair: Is it part of the education curriculum in this province?

Mr. Lyell Armitage: No.

Ms. Sandra Lane: If I could, I'll just speak to that for a moment. I can't speak for everywhere, right across the province, because it differs, and that's one of my concerns. There's never a consistent message across the board.

Many of our schools in this health district have programs. The Catholic school system, for example, has a Quest program, which is very much a lifestyles program. It is very excellent, and usually what happens is there is someone like myself who'll resource that. It's called the Lions-Quest. It was developed by the Lions Club, and teachers are trained in it.

Usually my role in that is to come in from the alcohol and drug component, which works really slickly, but when you ask does every school, or every student, or every classroom, or whatever get something, something is not enough. It needs to be ongoing, right from kindergarten up, with something beginning at the level of the very basics--not about illicit drugs--so that as I grow, by the time I'm in grade 10, 11, or 12 and issues start to really arise, it doesn't come as a surprise to me that there are some rules around this, there's legislation, there are all kinds of things, because it's been a part of us. It's a little bit like the old safe grad. When you go to grade 12, somebody said, “Now plan a safe grad”. That should have been happening from way back when. That's one part of it.

There's one other thing that I'd like to say about drug awareness and education. When you talk about budget...my understanding of this issue, just from talking to people who are on a committee for National Drug Awareness Week, or what we used to call Drug Awareness Week, which is right across the country, is that whereas last year I received one little boxful of materials for the thousands of parents and kids I work with, this year I get nothing. So it's very difficult to call it a Drug Awareness Week, where we will promote prevention and education in all classrooms, with all parents, in a health district like Saskatoon.

I'm a pretty good person for coming up with my own initiatives, but it was always nice to have those extras for that week, because it is a special week. It's an addictions week where we will promote everything. Now we try to scrounge things from other areas, and that doesn't feel good. That's just an example I think to support what Lyell said.

But on the other end of the spectrum, again, it's exactly as you said, Madam Chairman, with the 95% and the 5%. Where are we going with this?

Á (1140)

The Chair: Mr. Beaudin.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: On the idea of the collaborative efforts and integrated services, we've taken it to the extreme and have made it very successful for us. For us, it's something that we believe in strongly, and we notice the difference as far as how we deliver the service to clients and how others who come into our environment deliver services to clients. They've changed the way they deliver services. It's so much cheaper.

Just within our school programs, rent is not an issue. When school boards put teachers in there, they don't have the cost of rent, they don't have the cost of administrative support; it's there. They don't have the cost of phones and all of those things because it's in an existing facility. It's so much cheaper, but it also certainly keeps everybody working together and keeps us focused on the changing trends of the client. And it has educated a lot of the managers who have become involved. They're saying, this is amazing. Addiction services were not seeing many of our children in our inner cities before, but now they are. They have put a full-time addictions worker in there, and as a result, she has contact with many of our kids. Before, our kids didn't go downtown in an appointment-style situation, but now they see their addictions worker all the time. So that has been very positive. It is certainly cheaper.

The Chair: Did you have a model for this program, or did you develop the model? Certainly, if you achieve half of what's written in this brochure, you're going to have the most magnificent program in the country, as far as I can tell.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: There are not a whole lot of models like it around. There is Nutana Collegiate High School on the east side, which has been running a very similar type of program for a few years now within the school. They have put in social workers, addictions people, and other types of support and student services, and they've put in those types of support in the school because they realized that's what the kids needed. That has started to work because that was a grassroots-driven type of request from the kids.

The Chair: Is that also serving the aboriginal population?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Yes. There is a high amount of our kids who will go to that school now because there are other existing supports--for instance, for teen parents. But of course that is a school, so it closes at the end of the day. We're open from 8:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. for support.

The Chair: Is there a YMCA or a United Way program? I know in my community, for instance, at least on Friday and Saturday nights, I help support, personally, keeping facilities open for kids to play basketball until 2 a.m. and to hang out so that they're not on the street.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: That's a good question. I'm actually a board member of the United Way. We fund a lot of community organizations in Saskatoon that deliver specific services--mobile crisis, rape crisis and those types of services, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Big Brothers.

Á (1145)

The Chair: How about that late night thing?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: There's not too much of that. For some reason, the city has tried some initiatives in the past with late night types of support, and that's why they're with us now, because it couldn't be consistent.

The difficulty is, as Mr. Ménard has talked about, we get a lot of resistance from the community based on moral perspectives. The resistance we do get, from skeptics in our community, is mainly because of moral stuff. You know, if we're open until two in the morning we're breaking the law, because we have a 10 o'clock curfew in our community; if we encourage the kids to do artwork on the back of our building because they don't do artwork on the front of our building--graffiti--then someone drives by and phones the mayor and complains, saying, “They're allowing their kids to do graffiti”; if we have kids in our parking lot, we have specific people who will complain about that, because they're congregating and they're gangs. So where would you like them, in your community or on the streets? Those are some of the moral issues we run into as far as the community is concerned. So “two in the morning” creates a whole bag of apples in our community.

We've had to take baby steps and we've had to do all kinds of public relations and convincing specific people that this is a good thing, that this is what we need, because they may not live in that area, or they may not understand it, or it tends to be a bit of a moral issue. He's definitely correct when he says we need to remove that and think about specifics, factual things, what's best for the client.

The Chair: There's been mention today about harm reduction and the various components of harm reduction. Certainly some of our colleagues, if they were here, would tell you some people think harm reduction is really harm extension, and that maybe because its first message isn't abstinence, it's not good enough. Yet a lot of the activities you describe--that everyone has described--are really harm reduction strategies. To my way of thinking, abstinence definitely plays a role in that, because that's reducing harm for the people who are there.

Prevention seems to me to be so basic in terms of stopping people from getting involved in some of the activities in the first place, or delaying the onset; it's been difficult to hear how little is done across the country at any level, and who should carry it out--federally, provincially, municipally, whatever. It would seem as a nation we need to get our act together, and it should be incorporated the same way we should probably incorporate regard and respect for kids. A lot of the things you were describing were people who just don't like children being anywhere.

I guess part of those strategies, and it's not really a prevention or education process, although some parts of it are, involve needle exchange programs. Some people are suggesting safe injection sites. Most of you haven't talked about injection drug use, so maybe it's not as much of an issue here. But if this committee were to make recommendations that there be a national strategy, that it focus on meeting people where they're at, that it focus more on prevention, that we allow communities to put in place things that were important to their community, would some of those activities or those programs fly in this province or in some of the communities you work in? What other things should we include in some of those recommendations?

Clearly, where there's no injection drug use, a safe injection site is the furthest thing from their mind. But in downtown Vancouver's east side, getting people out of the alley and into some place warm and safe so you can monitor them might be good.

You mentioned the death that, unfortunately, occurred this weekend. I understand that in Holland there are test kits available for Ecstasy, so that's a harm reduction strategy. It doesn't condone the use. It says “Make sure you're not using rat poison mixed up into a pill. Make sure you know what you're getting.”

Certainly, some of the needle exchanges go a long way to seeing if there are other ways people could be.... You know, they give out condoms. They prevent HIV. They try to recommend other services and provide a cup of coffee or a warm place to sleep for 20 minutes, or whatever.

Are those consistent with things that would be supported in this province? Is there a need for things like that in this province?

Let's start with Mr. Beaudin.

Á (1150)

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Sure, there is IV drug use in this community.

The Chair: What are they injecting?

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Whatever. People inject all kinds of things. I mean, people are using Ritalin and Talwin and stuff. I know people have shot coffee into their veins, believe it or not. There are all of those things, cocaine and heroin, and sniffing mescaline and those types of things. That's certainly an issue here. It's rising and increasing. I see it with our kids. Certainly, for some of the kids it's definitely an issue. They're habitual users and they use intravenously, and some of them are quite young--15 and 16--and of course they're involved in all the other aspects of the system, the justice system and those type of things. So it's certainly an issue.

We have two programs currently running in our community. One is through District Health, and that is a clean needle program, and the other one is outreach. It's similar to outreach, but they do not give needles; they give out condoms, sandwiches, and resources. Those two programs are the closest we would have to harm reduction-type programming in our community, I guess.

Those two programs deal with a lot of criticism all the time from the community. I remember going to a meeting one time. Some in the community were rallying to shut these programs down. Someone said--and this kind of summed up what a lot of people believe--they should get rid of all needles and not make them any more and that would fix the problem around intravenous drug use.

Yes, we have a huge issue in our community, a debate around those things. We are still working, through a safer cities initiative.... I used to be involved in a committee that was looking at something like they have in Calgary, where they use post office boxes--the mail boxes--and they paint them, attach them to a slab of concrete, and that's where people discard their dirty needles. That direction was looked at in this community, or using safe containers--big plastic bins or whatever--for people to throw their dirty needles in.

There's a fear in our community around finding dirty needles in parks and places like that. The fear is that a child will be pricked and get HIV or hepatitis. Certainly, the increase in our kids with hepatitis is much bigger than anything. It's bigger than anything through either sex or intravenous drug use. So that's what we're seeing as well.

But that whole issue of needles and people finding discarded dirty needles is something that's being debated. People are afraid. Healthwise, I don't think it's as big as.... When a person gets pricked by a needle, the chances are it is...you know, HIV and all of those things, of course, slim down to the point of actual risk. However, it's certainly a valid concern for every parent in the community, and it's more so in parks in the inner city, of course, or where there's a higher use. But we find them all over the city. Certain areas are higher than others, but yes, it's definitely...

The difficulty, again, is the resistance: the realists, and of course the people who don't understand what's really going on in the community--and maybe they don't want to know. That's part of it too.

So any type of support would be good.

Á (1155)

The Chair: Thank you.

Reverend Powell.

Rev. Powell: One of the things I keep hearing in regard to the needle exchange program--and I don't have any problem with that--is that they should be marked.

The Chair: Marked? How?

Rev. Powell: There's talk about the one-for-one exchange, that you'd know what you were getting. Unfortunately, we don't know... I heard somebody sharing the other day about little kids coming back with needles. They were sent with a note from mom.

Where are they getting them from? Are these diabetic needles? Are they for heroin? In other words, what we're saying--

The Chair: Does it matter?

Rev. Powell: No, it doesn't matter, but I'd like to see whether or not it's a little more effective...that we actually have some evidence as to whether it's working.

I think the needle exchange program needs to be there. Again, I don't have any problem with prevention. Harm reduction does exactly that, it reduces harm.

The Chair: You could be our poster child!

Thank you.

Ms. Lane, and then Mr. Armitage.

Ms. Sandra Lane: I haven't a lot more to say on that, except that I think along with any of the programs we're talking about here there is also an opportunity for education and intervention with the people we're working with. If you give out a needle, a condom, a lunch, or anything to people, along with that should go an opportunity to educate that person, to provide literature.

Some of our addiction people in the city ride with some of those vans, so there is an opportunity to talk to somebody--a phone number, a call, where to access some service. Of course, as we're well aware, they're not all ready to do that, but certainly we can have a tremendous influence on motivating people to want to make some change in their life. If we don't, I don't think we should be in business. I think that becomes a big part of any of these programs.

Also, we're truly on the fence over the safe injection sites. One of the police officers in the city phoned me the other day and asked for my thoughts on this, and, boy, did I think. Again, I'm trying to see whether if we had that, it would be something we could really reach people with to make a difference in their lives. Or are you again just setting up something that says, “Well, it's okay because now you've provided...”? It's one of those very fine lines, I guess, that you always take a look at.

We have a lot of injection drug users in our city, as you're going to hear from some of the people who I know are presenting to this committee. We have a lot. It's a grave concern for the police, and for us in recovery services. That's basically all I have to say.

I just think along with it goes everything else we need to do for people to motivate them to make changes in their lives and reduce the harm that's occurring at the time they're using.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: Are we done here at noon?

The Chair: Yes.

I have a question, before you answer.

Is it mandated to have needle exchanges? In my province, every district health council has to have a needle exchange program. And it's fascinating, because there's no heat. I don't think most of them do mandate it.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: Are you from Alberta?

The Chair: No, Ontario.

Mr. Gary Beaudin: I don't think it's mandated here.

The Chair: It's interesting, though, because it takes out all the heat. I don't think most of the people even know there's a needle exchange program in their community. There are different delivery methods, because some of it's rural and some urban.

Okay, so it's not.

Ms. Sandra Lane: No, I don't think so.

Mr. Lyell Armitage: I get really agitated with needle exchange.

First of all, I don't refer to it as needle exchange. It's needle handout. They give them away by the boxful.

Now, here again, if we got back to doing things the way things...if you have a law that says this is the way it should be, and you get the law enforcement people to follow the rules and regulations, that would make me much happier than what goes on now.

With needle exchange, it's “Here's a dirty needle, here's a clean needle”. But I have it on good authority that in some areas there's a black market for needles. The addict takes a box of clean needles, unused, doesn't give up any of his used needles, takes them and sells them--at my expense, as a taxpayer.

Last year the Regina Health District had an increase of $100,000 in needles alone. One line on the public health budget was $100,000 for needles. I think they probably had $250,000 in that budget for needles to begin with. Now, we're talking about dollars, resources, and prevention. I think it's really a waste of valuable resources and dollars.

The other attitude is where people say, we're going to prevent these drug addicts and these people who are sick from getting HIV and other diseases, AIDS, and hep A, B, and C. But according to the research, when you take a look at it, when you sit down and study it, this stuff isn't working. That's what I said in my initial remarks.

Take a look at Vancouver. On the CCENDU committee the medical health officer who used to be the representative for Vancouver made a comment publicly one time. She said we could be dropping needles from airplanes over the east side of Vancouver and it still wouldn't make any difference. Now, they have a really serious problem there. I'm just so happy that I don't live in Vancouver and have the responsibility of trying to solve that problem. They have a really unique situation there that is probably going to take unique kinds of solutions to solve.

We certainly don't have that kind of a problem here in Saskatchewan--touch wood, thank goodness--and I'm very grateful for that. It gets back to this business of what I believe in at the heart and core. I believe in harm elimination; I don't believe in harm reduction.

If you're a drug addict and you're shooting up 30 or 40 times a day with God only knows what substances, do you really care whether you have a clean needle or not? Unless you get treatment for your drug addiction, you're going to die anyway. You're going to die from an overdose or you're going to die from AIDS. This is why I say I don't want anybody to die.

I've talked to some people who really believe in harm reduction. Sandy says thank goodness here in Saskatoon they have an addictions worker going with the needle, a handout person. I suggested they say to the person, “There are options other than poking yourself with a needle 30 times a day. Have you ever considered trying to get clean and sober? Has anyone ever talked to you about treatment? Has anyone ever talked to you about quitting?” This is as opposed to someone continually giving and giving and giving.

As a recovered person myself I can ask, why would I want to make any changes in my life if people are going to continue to enable me, to give me what it is I want that will cater to me? I'm trying to be as mature and as sensible as I can be. I think you get the sense of how I feel about this.

I talked earlier in my remarks about my grandchildren. I don't want my grandchildren growing up in a society that says, oh, that's all right, here, we'll give you a clean this and a clean that. I'm against that. I wouldn't want my grandkids to say to me, “You used to be in this business, didn't you, grandpa? What did you do about it?” Well, today I can say that I came and talked to the lawmakers from the federal government and gave it my best shot.

I'm against harm reduction. In certain areas it works, but in other areas I believe in harm elimination. Let's get rid of this stuff altogether. We do that by tightening up the laws, by being a little more dedicated to what we have in place, and by having consequences. If there are no consequences, if there are going to be no dire, negative effects, then these people are going to continue to remain sick and not be treated.

Â (1200)

The Chair: Thank you. That will bring to a close our panel today.

Â (1205)

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: Can we have a second round?

The Chair: I would have liked to have a second round, but the answers were very long, as were the questions in the beginning.

Mr. Réal Ménard: Yes, but you have to be fair regarding each person's time. You cannot let...

The Chair: I can tell you that I kept track of each person's time.

Mr. Réal Ménard: We will talk about it again later.

[English]

The Chair: Okay.

Thank you very much to our panellists. Thank you for the time you put in to come here today and to prepare a presentation. Also, I think very importantly, thank you to all of you for the dedication and the work you do so passionately each and every day in our communities. I'm sure the people of Saskatchewan thank you, and I know all Canadians thank you. So keep up the good work.

If you have other ideas or comments or anything--studies to refer us to--we're very happy to have those. Our other clerk, Carol Chafe, will be happy to receive those and to distribute everything in both official languages. The e-mail is available as you leave, if you don't already have it.

Thank you very much.

I'll adjourn until two o'clock.