CBCNEWS — The Nature of Things
20260816 020000 UTC
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[00:00:09] of
[00:00:11] of
[00:00:33] On this edition
[00:00:34] of the fifth estate, we're in Vancouver's downtown east
[00:00:38] side, the epicenter of a poison drug crisis in
[00:00:41] Canada. Since 2016, more than 4,000
[00:00:45] people have died of opioid overdoses in this city. More
[00:00:49] than 50,000 across Canada, the main killer is
[00:00:52] Fentinel. IA was
[00:00:56] overdosing like upwards of twice a day, I think the... that i'm
[00:01:00] going now like
[00:01:00] in i could die any day
[00:01:03] in now down here it's regression let
[00:01:06] panicked response that involved prescribing millions of
[00:01:09] pills it wasn't working the dose was too low we're
[00:01:13] spending hundreds of millions of dollars on our treatments and they're not
[00:01:17] of working and sometimes ended up in the wrong hands these guys are
[00:01:21] counting pills right here there you go did politics get in the way
[00:01:25] of saving lives i think people have been manipulated
[00:01:28] politically by certain actors who want to
[00:01:32] stoke fear, we talked to experts who had the ear
[00:01:35] of the prime minister, we had the highest people in the government intrigued by
[00:01:39] of this idea and reveal why it all fell short. safe supply
[00:01:43] itself is not
[00:01:44] a a failure, safe supply has never been tried yet. if this was
[00:01:49] a of
[00:01:49] of of happening to another group of people and
[00:01:50] of we could do something about it and we've chosen not to, it's
[00:01:53] a crases, we need help. i'm stephen desousa, this is the
[00:01:57] fifth estate.
[00:02:11] What does a person who uses drugs look
[00:02:15] of like? It's not always what or who you
[00:02:20] of think. Each one carries their own
[00:02:23] story and faces their own
[00:02:26] of unique set of challenges.
[00:02:30] often masking years of pain and
[00:02:32] of trauma at the root
[00:02:33] of their
[00:02:34] addiction,
[00:02:38] a so I
[00:02:39] of mean even even as we're
[00:02:40] of talking now, you're already thinking about where you have to go or how you have to get your
[00:02:44] next uh, yeah, it's constantly on my
[00:02:50] in mind. of I meet TJ Felix in Vancouver
[00:02:52] in a Friday in September around
[00:02:55] of noon. They say they've
[00:02:56] of already done two shots, just one would have. been
[00:03:00] enough to
[00:03:00] of kill
[00:03:03] a me. some people have this idea
[00:03:05] of of what a person who uses drugs should look like after taking drugs right? like
[00:03:09] there's there's no do I look like
[00:03:11] of kind of a dope? no.
[00:03:13] in what of do you say to somebody who may have that stereotype in your head listening to
[00:03:17] a you now? mean, we all we come in all shapes and sizes. mean,
[00:03:21] drug users come from all walks
[00:03:23] of of life. i a two spirits,
[00:03:26] kelmuk, indigenous to the interior bc.
[00:03:30] "we're each individuals and we have our individual needs and I
[00:03:34] think um medically that means acknowledging like that we have
[00:03:38] specific drugs that we use and if we're not given those exact
[00:03:41] drugs then
[00:03:45] like treatment doesn't
[00:03:47] work. They get their drugs on the
[00:03:51] a street because like so many chronic drug users they don't
[00:03:54] have safe regulated option. If I had
[00:03:58] like a steady like..." dose from doctor or
[00:04:02] something, but that's not something
[00:04:04] of that's really
[00:04:06] of possible for me at the moment, it's a matter of life and death,
[00:04:13] of really.
[00:04:20] tj Felix grew up beside eagle river and lake in
[00:04:23] bc's
[00:04:24] interior.
[00:04:28] they say they were exposed to drug. and
[00:04:30] alcohol earlier
[00:04:34] than anyone should be,
[00:04:38] on and off, since I was about nine years old, I've
[00:04:42] a struggled with alcoholism and chronic drug
[00:04:45] use, you had a
[00:04:46] a pretty fucked up childhood, I guess you could say,
[00:04:49] yeah,
[00:04:54] of by 2007 at the age of 18, TJ was living in
[00:04:57] Vancouver, creating music. and art a prolific
[00:05:01] pace,
[00:05:03] of but also falling in and out of
[00:05:05] in treatment programs. I think that um, it's entirely possible to be a
[00:05:09] functioning and contributing member of society while being a... chronic drug
[00:05:13] user, but um,
[00:05:15] you know, it's also like very fine line, I
[00:05:18] think, um, that I've crossed many
[00:05:20] times.
[00:05:24] Tonight, TJ is heading to a rehearsal for an upcoming show. Just
[00:05:28] steps from their Vancouver apartment in the trendy Mount Pleasant
[00:05:32] neighborhood, they lean into a familiar
[00:05:35] ritual. Music still helps me get through the
[00:05:38] day, it's how I communicate really.
[00:05:43] I love making
[00:05:43] music.
[00:05:51] If music is their healing ritual, it's in contrast
[00:05:55] to their other ritual. Today TJ uses a dangerous
[00:05:58] mix of fentinol and methamphetamine 10
[00:06:02] times every 24
[00:06:04] hours.
[00:06:11] The euphoria. is long, long gone, I
[00:06:15] don't really get any pleasure out of using, it's just
[00:06:19] something that uh, at this point has become a substitute
[00:06:23] for community and
[00:06:25] therapy and everything else that um
[00:06:29] functioning adults
[00:06:31] you know need in their daily
[00:06:33] lives. TJ says using
[00:06:37] also keeps away the painful and dangerous symptoms of
[00:06:40] withdrawal. 'I would kill myself if I had to go
[00:06:44] through intense withdraw again, it's something
[00:06:47] that you avoid it any cost, and um,
[00:06:51] the worst deepest level of addiction
[00:06:55] is when you're just using to avoid that,
[00:06:59] um, it's no life at all
[00:07:02] really, when it revolves just around you not being
[00:07:05] sick'.
[00:07:17] TJ was one of thousands of drug users caught by surprise when
[00:07:20] fentino began to take over the drug
[00:07:22] supply.
[00:07:26] The synthetic opioid which is up to 100 times stronger than
[00:07:30] morphine was a cheap and convenient way for dealers to make more
[00:07:34] potent drugs. In British
[00:07:37] Columbia, overdoses nearly doubled between 2015 and
[00:07:41] 2016. and provincial officials declared
[00:07:44] emergency. Mark
[00:07:48] Tindal is a physician whose research put him on the front lines the
[00:07:52] HIV and then the drug crisis in Vancouver. At one point
[00:07:56] there were two or three deaths a day in the downtown east
[00:08:00] side and in the province there was six or
[00:08:03] seven so we knew something had rapidly switched
[00:08:07] and uh lot the desks had no heroin at all. It
[00:08:11] appeared that people were now uh using
[00:08:14] fenton
[00:08:20] by 2016, fentinel was showing up in two-thirds the
[00:08:24] nearly 100 drug deaths in the province. the pharmaceutical
[00:08:28] once used for chronic pain and post surgery was being mass
[00:08:31] produced by organized crime in clandestine labs,
[00:08:35] flooding the streets, so 2017 doubled again, 2018
[00:08:39] and all of sudden we're up to like 200 deaths.
[00:08:42] year and uh 80-90% were all fentinol
[00:08:46] toxicology. It had very chilling
[00:08:49] impact, everybody felt at risk, and and they were at risk
[00:08:53] if they were buying this on the street. Tindol's
[00:08:57] patients were among those at risk including Mark
[00:09:00] dejarle, chronic drug user, he's known Tindle for
[00:09:04] 25 years. I wouldn't be here without
[00:09:08] him, he uh really saved my life
[00:09:12] and... "he he did more than what a doctor should,
[00:09:16] you know, he went above and beyond to help me, and I
[00:09:20] appreciate that. Tindle's help came a time when the crisis was
[00:09:24] making daily headlines deaths caused by overdoses of opioids
[00:09:28] and other drugs, with a public health emergency declared in
[00:09:31] BC, this is an extraordinary challenge. Overdose
[00:09:34] fatalities in the province are going up, not
[00:09:37] down. As the death toll kept
[00:09:41] climbing,..." Tindle started prescribing patients like
[00:09:45] Dejarlet hydromorphone pills, an opioid also
[00:09:48] known under the brand name Deloded. It was a drug already
[00:09:52] regulated and approved, though not for chronic opioid
[00:09:55] users. It was uh easy to prescribe, it
[00:09:59] was readily available, it was cheap, and it was already established
[00:10:03] on the streets, so Dilotted had already become kind of part the drug
[00:10:07] economy. Knowing that I could write them a prescription for an
[00:10:11] opioid that wouldn't kill them. I just felt that was the only ethical
[00:10:14] thing that I should be doing, for Dejarle, having an
[00:10:18] alternative to the street supply was like dodging a bullet. What did it
[00:10:22] mean for your life to be able to have be on that program? Uh... make things
[00:10:25] easier and uh
[00:10:28] you know do something that's clean and
[00:10:32] notes in it when you don't have safe supply or when you
[00:10:36] don't have it you know in that way where does your supply come from
[00:10:40] or how how just from the street guess the street yeah yeah is that
[00:10:43] and is does that concern you not knowing sometimes where it may be coming
[00:10:47] from uh i try not to think about
[00:10:49] it yeah you know mean down
[00:10:53] here it's e
[00:10:55] let i
[00:10:55] guess,
[00:11:00] but these tiny 8 milligram pills couldn't help
[00:11:03] everyone. for Tommy
[00:11:07] Cortzaris who's been using in Vancouver for over 22
[00:11:11] years, it wasn't enough. it's very
[00:11:14] difficult to um to come off
[00:11:17] fan and uh
[00:11:21] and supplement it with some kind of.
[00:11:26] coming up, what happens when the government turns its attention to the crisis
[00:11:29] and funds alternatives? will the prime minister cancel the dollars
[00:11:33] for drugs, just stop it and save lives,
[00:11:37] and we'll show how the fallout was being felt on the streets. oh, i've
[00:11:41] seen them exchange bills, i've seen them do crack, and they look around
[00:11:45] like, oh, nobody's watching, what do you mean, the whole world is
[00:11:48] watching.
[00:11:56] Hi there, Canada.
[00:11:58] Hi, how are you holding
[00:12:01] up?
[00:12:05] It's been difficult to say the least. I
[00:12:09] intend to resign as party leader, as prime
[00:12:12] minister. The funny, not so funny thing
[00:12:16] about the world right now, is the thing that can
[00:12:20] consume your thoughts, is the thing you maybe didn't
[00:12:24] see coming. "my favorite word,
[00:12:28] tariff is going to be cracking down,
[00:12:32] minimum 10% tariff on all imports. some contracts are already getting
[00:12:36] canceled, facing a potential 25 or even 50% tariff on
[00:12:39] steel exports were already hearing about layoffs, feeling the financial pain of
[00:12:43] Canada's 25% counter tariffs. he believes that Canadians
[00:12:47] would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state. when our sovereignty is
[00:12:51] threatened, you do what you can, he is trying to..."
[00:12:55] to break us, so you have questions: how should
[00:12:59] Canadians be preparing for that next trip? what is your plan? how seriously
[00:13:03] are you taking this threat of 100% tariffs on foreign-made films?
[00:13:07] lot of questions: how is hamilton bracing for tariff impact? when
[00:13:11] we talk about counter terrorists, do those affect you? how much does it cost
[00:13:15] to be patriotic when picking items at the grocery store? and while your
[00:13:19] elbows have been up, elbows
[00:13:22] up, for us, it's the sleeves. world
[00:13:25] up, because you need answers about your neighborhood,
[00:13:29] your world, your Canada, and what it
[00:13:32] means for all
[00:13:33] of us to say, we are
[00:13:36] Canadian,
[00:13:40] our journalists countrywide and all over the world are on the
[00:13:44] case. Do you think you're going to have to
[00:13:47] close? I hate to think about
[00:13:50] that.
[00:13:57] I'm about 15 km from the Russian border. Where
[00:14:01] are Canada's allies? Where are Canada's markets? What
[00:14:05] is this country's place on the planet? It's the uncertainty that's the biggest
[00:14:09] issue. What is the next thing to happen and what will it mean for all of
[00:14:13] us? We assume that it will be uh difficult
[00:14:16] road. Canada, we got you.
[00:14:20] And we are right there, right beside you trying to make
[00:14:24] sense of it.
[00:16:55] Claudia West has traveled the streets of Vancouver's downtown east side for
[00:16:59] 14 years. This
[00:17:03] is home, the people here, her
[00:17:05] family. That's going to be lot
[00:17:09] more homeless people. She is a chronic
[00:17:13] drug user and three times a day she makes a
[00:17:16] journey for
[00:17:20] safe supply that keeps her stable.
[00:17:24] Bye. When I was really sick, four years ago, they asked me if I
[00:17:28] wanted to join, and I go, really. Then that's
[00:17:31] okay too. Here she gets an injection of diacetalmorphine,
[00:17:35] pharmaceutical heroin. she's part of injectable program
[00:17:39] helping 83 chronic drug users. this model
[00:17:43] was the first of its kind in north america but
[00:17:47] i joined it and it's pretty good yeah it's been
[00:17:51] keeping me clean for december nine will be four years four
[00:17:55] years clean from the street drugs yeah so tell me about the street drugs what what were
[00:17:59] you using before? i was using heroin and fentana
[00:18:03] yeah and the benzo was in it you know it was
[00:18:07] getting. pretty bad. In 2021,
[00:18:11] while in hospital for serious infection, she was approached with a chance to
[00:18:15] join the program. How does it help you? Well, it keeps me clean
[00:18:19] from the street sides, which is a big thing, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:22] Is it about the high or is it about just? It's not about the high, it just makes
[00:18:26] you, it, it just makes you feel good, like, like, I got
[00:18:30] stiff every day when I wake up, and the shot loosens
[00:18:34] my body, yeah, it just loosens it right out.
[00:18:37] Yeah, all right, so tell me about this poster, yeah,
[00:18:41] so this is a copy the original advertisement we
[00:18:45] launched safe supply in, so we took out a full
[00:18:49] page ad in the Georgia Straits about safe supply and why it was
[00:18:53] needed back in 2018, 2018, yes,
[00:18:56] well, while Crosstown had
[00:19:00] been running its program since 2005, the term safe
[00:19:04] supply didn't enter the conversation until 28.
[00:19:08] thanks in part to Jordan Westfall. I guess the message in the middle there is
[00:19:12] quite clear, people never have to worry
[00:19:14] that the next tip of beer they drink will kill them. Why can't we all have that safety?
[00:19:17] Yeah. At the time he was a high achieving university
[00:19:21] student, but in private he was hiding addiction.
[00:19:25] I felt at times I was living almost a double life, right? Uh, honor
[00:19:29] student, sort of respectable, and then the other side, uh, seeking
[00:19:33] drugs on the streets and just the sort of sometimes agony that comes
[00:19:37] with it. Westfall got
[00:19:40] sober and came to Vancouver to tackle the drug crisis. He entered
[00:19:44] grad school in public health. It seemed very clear to me that
[00:19:48] everybody was using these drugs that they didn't really know uh what was in
[00:19:52] them. As a person who use these drugs that when you know what they are
[00:19:56] and they're predictable uh you're way less likely to
[00:19:59] overdose. For West Fall safe supply meant legalizing and
[00:20:03] regulating opioids, stimulants and hallucinagens. He outlined
[00:20:07] his ideas in this 2018 concept
[00:20:09] paper, which also included
[00:20:13] expanding access to the kind of pharmaceutical heroin Claudia
[00:20:17] West was using at Crosstown. That program proved
[00:20:21] it, that the evidence proved it. This idea caught on pretty quick. Within a year of
[00:20:25] us sort of launching this term safe supply, I
[00:20:28] was, talking
[00:20:29] to the prime minister about it less than year later. It started to create just
[00:20:33] rallying cry for people on the streets who really needed this.
[00:20:37] In 2019, Health Canada created an expert advisory group
[00:20:41] to provide input on proposed pilot programs. Westfall was
[00:20:45] made co-chair, pushing for legal and regulated
[00:20:48] drugs. but he quickly realized the group
[00:20:52] wasn't willing to go that far. take this drug we already
[00:20:55] have, just give it out to people and and it's fine,
[00:20:59] you know, problem solved. the thing is, 50,00 people have died of
[00:21:02] overdose to preventable death in this country. everything needs to
[00:21:05] change. westfall realized that even having the ear
[00:21:09] of prime minister Justin Trudeau wasn't enough. so we're
[00:21:13] presenting and encouraging safe supply to the prime minister who's asking
[00:21:17] what's the strongest evidence, what are the options with the strongest? evidence and
[00:21:21] we, took them through the concept paper
[00:21:24] uh, but at Health Canada on this expert advisory
[00:21:28] group, the conversation is different. Health
[00:21:32] Canada supported hydromorphone pills as safe supply, they
[00:21:36] were available, easy to dispense, and some research show they led
[00:21:39] to less street drug use and fewer
[00:21:42] overdoses, but internal
[00:21:46] notes obtained by the fifth estate show advisory group members.
[00:21:50] the potential for diversion as early as
[00:21:53] 2019 and highlighted the success of options
[00:21:57] Westfall supported. We know now, and we knew then
[00:22:00] that these tablets are not as strong as a drug uh
[00:22:04] legal and regulated for someone specifically uh using
[00:22:08] Street Fatin. It'd be like, if uh, you have cup of coffee every morning, and we
[00:22:12] took your cup of coffee away and just gave you teaspoon of coffee and said, try and
[00:22:16] start
[00:22:16] your date with that. Uh, for most people it wouldn't work. but
[00:22:20] it's it's a fight you want to take on, yeah, yeah, Claudia
[00:22:24] West also knew that the pills, often called Dillies, didn't
[00:22:28] work for everyone. One the things we've heard is that people say the
[00:22:31] people who have prescriptions for delatted,
[00:22:34] they take those drugs and they sell them, yeah, yeah, lot
[00:22:38] them do, they yeah, they trade it for dope, yeah, what are they
[00:22:41] traded for for heroin and coke, yeah, yeah, you see lot
[00:22:45] of that, yeah, yeah, how often do you think that happens every
[00:22:49] day, yeah? Yeah, yeah, every day,
[00:22:51] yeah, what West described is called
[00:22:55] diversion, the selling of prescription pills to others. This
[00:22:59] sparked debate about the intent of safe supply.
[00:23:02] Supporters said diverted pills were still safer than the street
[00:23:06] supply. But opponents loudly
[00:23:09] called on the federal government to shut safe supply
[00:23:13] down. The prime minister has spent $100
[00:23:16] million dollars on so-called safe supply. turns out they're being
[00:23:20] resold to other addicts in order to raise the money to buy deadly
[00:23:24] fentinol. will the prime minister cancel the dollars for drugs and
[00:23:28] instead put the resources into treatment for addics. mr.
[00:23:32] speaker, we are pretty fed up with this fight
[00:23:36] against evidence-based programs that actually are saving
[00:23:39] lives. we cannot allow the conservatives to take us back
[00:23:43] to the failed ideology the past, so just stop it
[00:23:47] and save lives. In
[00:23:51] BC, the opposition conservatives leaked report revealing the
[00:23:54] NDP government new safer supply pills are not being
[00:23:58] consumed by their intended recipients, were
[00:24:02] being diverted and trafficked, they had proof from vehicle
[00:24:05] searches. They also identified 60 pharmacies
[00:24:09] offering incentives like cash to
[00:24:11] patients. In
[00:24:15] London, Ontario, where some local doctors had been trying out their own
[00:24:19] versions of safe supply, diversion made headlines when police
[00:24:23] seized over 11,00 delotted pills in 2024.
[00:24:27] the prescription drugs are being used as
[00:24:31] currency and individuals are
[00:24:34] using the diverted safe
[00:24:37] supply to obtain fenol.
[00:24:41] these guys are counting pills right here, there you
[00:24:43] go, and in Ottawa's Chinatown, one
[00:24:47] clinic became a flash point in the diversion to... how they're doing
[00:24:51] crack right there
[00:24:52] and a neighboring store owner had had enough,
[00:24:56] uncomfortable uh, i've had employees quit because of
[00:24:59] this because they threaten them when they
[00:25:01] say hey please move
[00:25:02] from front in front the door at the time fadi daya captured surveillance
[00:25:06] outside his cannabis shop. people who are going to watch this are going to think it's
[00:25:10] ironic that you know here you are selling cannabis yeah but you're
[00:25:13] complaining about drugs yeah but this is not a hard drug cannabis is not
[00:25:17] an addiction these drugs are addiction that could take
[00:25:21] control of human. he showed us videos he captured of what he believes
[00:25:25] are safe supply pills being exchanged in drug deals
[00:25:28] involving people from addiction clinic few doors down.
[00:25:32] you've seen people just exchanging the pills that they've just gotten. oh, i've seen them exchanging pills. i've
[00:25:36] seen them do crack. sometimes these guys, they think they're smart, they
[00:25:40] step away from the building, they come over here or over here and they look
[00:25:44] around like, oh, nobody's watching. what do you mean? the whole world is
[00:25:47] watching. Ottowa city
[00:25:51] counselor Aureel Troster has also watched first-hand the shift in
[00:25:55] her community. Immediately, within days of coming into the
[00:25:58] neighborhood, an entire criminal ecosystem developed
[00:26:02] around. clinic immediately and it was
[00:26:05] obvious everyone. you were seeing diversion happening right out in the open? absolutely,
[00:26:09] we all did. literally we would see people walk out the clinic, pull out their
[00:26:13] bottle, somebody else counting pills, we would
[00:26:16] see the exchange. when you were on the panel, none of this came as a
[00:26:19] surprise to Jordan Westfall. was
[00:26:21] there a warning or did they have a sense that the version would become issue? yeah,
[00:26:25] absolutely, absolutely, and i think there was a sense
[00:26:29] of where we we need to. frame
[00:26:33] this to the public, so the discussion wasn't, let's try to avoid this from
[00:26:37] being diverted, let's try to reframe the messaging around
[00:26:40] it. yep, yep, i'd say that's exactly
[00:26:42] right. coming up, one
[00:26:46] vancouver doctor gives patients what they need. this is
[00:26:50] unprecedented in the history of opiate prescribing, the dilotds didn't get
[00:26:54] people out of withdrawal, had to switch to a fencial product in order to alleviate those
[00:26:58] withdraw symptoms that are so uncomfortable for
[00:27:00] people.
[00:27:06] Hi there, Canada, how are you holding
[00:27:10] up? The
[00:27:14] funny, not so funny thing about the world right
[00:27:17] now, is the thing that can consume your
[00:27:20] thoughts, is the thing you maybe didn't see
[00:27:23] coming, my favorite word,
[00:27:27] tariff, minimum 10% tariff on all imports, some
[00:27:31] contracts are already getting. cancelled, we're already hearing about layoffs, feeling
[00:27:35] the financial pain of Canada's 25% counter tariffs.
[00:27:39] he is trying to break us. so you have
[00:27:42] questions: how should Canadians be preparing for that next
[00:27:46] trip? what is your plan? how seriously are you taking this threat of
[00:27:49] 100% tariffs on foreign made films? lot of
[00:27:53] questions. how is hamilton bracing for tariff impact? how much does it
[00:27:57] cost to be patriotic when picking items at the grocery store? and
[00:28:00] while your elbows have been...
[00:28:06] For us, it's the sleeves rolled up, because you need
[00:28:09] answers about your neighborhood, your world, your
[00:28:13] Canada. Our
[00:28:17] journalists countrywide and all over the world are on the
[00:28:20] case. Do you think you're going to have to close? I
[00:28:24] hate to think about
[00:28:25] that.
[00:28:33] Where are Canada's allies, where are Canada's
[00:28:36] markets? What is
[00:28:38] this country's place on the planet? It's the uncertainty that's the biggest
[00:28:41] issue. What is the next thing to happen and what will it mean for all
[00:28:45] of us? Canada, we got
[00:28:48] you, and we are right there, right beside
[00:28:52] you, trying to make sense of it with
[00:28:55] you.
[00:31:20] "a lot of times my day is reduced
[00:31:22] to working on
[00:31:26] my art and using a loan, like
[00:31:30] uh, drugs have kind of become like a substitute for lot of
[00:31:34] important things in my life.
[00:31:37] i have to do enough drugs to kill that would kill any other
[00:31:41] person, um..."
[00:31:47] "otherwise it just isn't
[00:31:49] manageable.
[00:31:55] For safe supply to work, it had to reach users like TJ
[00:31:59] Felix, but they say the types
[00:32:03] of drugs the program offered simply weren't strong enough to help
[00:32:07] them. It was a complete failure as far as I'm concerned, it
[00:32:10] didn't do anything to stabilize me or..."
[00:32:15] didn't meet me where i was at any way shape or form. if they just gave drug
[00:32:19] users the drugs that they need to function, there wouldn't be
[00:32:22] diversion. as diversion of safe supply
[00:32:26] medications took over headlines and tilted the debate against safe
[00:32:30] supply, TJ retreated to the streets. i
[00:32:34] think the way that i'm going now, like i could die any day
[00:32:37] now.
[00:32:46] program can never solve a problem that's created by policies. Christie
[00:32:50] Sutherland is family doctor working in the heart of Vancouver's toxic drug
[00:32:54] crisis. In the early days of safe
[00:32:58] supply, she tried the government approved hydromorphone
[00:33:01] pills, but soon realized at least
[00:33:05] 40% of her patients were not taking the pills she was
[00:33:08] prescribing. It wasn't working, the dose was too low and it
[00:33:12] it didn't help the patients stabilize or help them get away from. really they needed a
[00:33:16] higher potency medication to help them stay away from withdraw. Sutherland
[00:33:20] chose to end the program after two years and worked on what she hoped
[00:33:24] would be more effective alternative, but that meant cutting off her
[00:33:28] patients from delauded, and for some them
[00:33:31] this meant a loss of income since they were selling the
[00:33:34] pills. If I was getting free wine from my family doctor, and then if my family
[00:33:38] doctor stopped it, I would be really angry at them. The violence got to the point
[00:33:41] where your life was threatened. Yeah, so we had to make the... clinic all
[00:33:45] telehealth and had to leave town for the safety the staff and
[00:33:48] myself. instead of backing down, she
[00:33:52] came up with revolutionary alternative. so we worked with a
[00:33:56] pharmaceutical company and local compounding pharmacy in order to create new
[00:34:00] funtional product that's both smokable and injectable. i think it's the first smokable
[00:34:04] pharmaceutical product that's ever existed. that's not easy. why why do
[00:34:07] that? well, because we had nothing else at the time. she
[00:34:11] started off prescribing low doses, but soon learned... just
[00:34:15] how high some patients tolerance was. my first guess was 250
[00:34:19] micrograms. based that on the drug checking systems here in Vancouver.
[00:34:23] um, and the patients who we started said they couldn't even feel it. so you went from
[00:34:26] 250 to 20 thousand. yeah, never would have thought. and so now we have
[00:34:30] people on 20,00 micrograms of fentinel per dose, which is just
[00:34:34] astronomical dose that never thought i'd ever be prescribing in my
[00:34:37] life. to put this in context,
[00:34:41] getting fentinal at the hospital for a broken leg might be 50. to
[00:34:45] 100 micrograms. Sutherland was
[00:34:48] prescribing 200 times that amount. She helps
[00:34:52] just 70 people in her research program. So, for my patient
[00:34:55] population, there's a rigorous intake process with an interview with the physician, the
[00:34:59] urine drug tested, they see the nurse, they see the pharmacist, and then we observe
[00:35:03] them to figure out what their individual dose is, and then they can enter into our
[00:35:07] fentinal or heroin sales programs where they can purchase
[00:35:10] their their drugs from the pharmacy uh for a little
[00:35:14] bit. higher than what is the street cost to prevent them from selling it
[00:35:18] onward um and but that they know it's a pharmaceutical version the drug with
[00:35:22] no contamination and it's a a way to exit street life.
[00:35:25] safe supply are we
[00:35:29] got supply she wasn't the only one trying to
[00:35:33] find an alternative
[00:35:34] to the safe supply program.
[00:35:38] others faced criminal charges for trying to help users. in
[00:35:42] october 2023 was arrested for drug
[00:35:46] trafficking after operating a compassion club which sold a
[00:35:49] clean supply of drugs to users. they called it the drug
[00:35:53] user liberation front or Dolph. we wanted to get realistic
[00:35:57] picture of what would happen if people had access to
[00:36:01] um regulated supply of substances that they had to
[00:36:04] purchase. Callcom had seen the
[00:36:08] impact of an unsafe supply through his brother who began using
[00:36:12] while working in the trades and recovering from injury. "It's very
[00:36:16] personal, because when you have somebody in your life who who uses substances or
[00:36:19] uses substances a chaotic way, you realize that
[00:36:22] the the most important thing um, when they're in sort of chaotic use
[00:36:26] patterns is that they stay. with
[00:36:30] master's degree in public health and experience working and testing drugs at
[00:36:33] overdose prevention sites in BC, calcom worked with co-founder
[00:36:37] Aris nicks to create safe alternative in the downtown east
[00:36:41] side. people really just had no resources are way to keep
[00:36:45] themselves safe. the government had been doing its
[00:36:48] own safe supply program with delotted pills. why not rely on that? the
[00:36:52] drugs that they were providing were sufficient, that that's something that that we were telling them that
[00:36:56] you're going to give people. drugs that they don't want, the club had to source
[00:37:00] drugs from the dark web, tested them at university labs and
[00:37:04] then sold uncontaminated heroin, cocaine and
[00:37:07] methamphetamine to select group of members. we had
[00:37:11] exemptions to the laws, we had overdose prevention site
[00:37:15] designations, what we explained, what we were doing and how it was understood
[00:37:19] was a form of drug checking for people, we talked to the
[00:37:22] police, we talk to the health authority, we talked to
[00:37:26] the local government, we talked to the provincial government, we talked to the
[00:37:30] federal government. what did you start to see? what were the what were the impacts? we saw that people
[00:37:34] overdosed way less uh, we didn't have anybody die, but we also saw
[00:37:38] things that we weren't expecting, we we saw people that worked
[00:37:41] accessing the club, stop using drugs once they were able to gain that
[00:37:45] stability and not have to be like kind of flailing around trying to
[00:37:49] find substances or getting ripped off, people had to
[00:37:52] commit less crime if they were committing crime, they had to do less sex
[00:37:56] work, they... interacted with the police less, they
[00:38:00] interacted with the hospital system less, um,
[00:38:04] people felt like they were more stable in their
[00:38:06] lives,
[00:38:10] like I'd be dead 10 times over if it wasn't for them. TJ Felix was
[00:38:14] one of just 24 people who were part the first trial. Dolf was like
[00:38:18] huge, like part of my social life
[00:38:21] and uh communal like like community building
[00:38:25] and my my you know... gateway to the community
[00:38:29] really and uh to just be around people every
[00:38:32] day. Calicom and Nicks were found guilty of drug trafficking
[00:38:35] early November, but that's not the end. They filed a
[00:38:39] constitutional challenge, arguing drug users have a right safe
[00:38:43] supply. We think there's a real constitutional issue
[00:38:47] here that like needs to be addressed if we're ever going to get to the
[00:38:51] point where we don't have thousands of people dying every year from
[00:38:54] preventable deaths, it's you our friends. our family
[00:38:58] and our communities who are at risk of dying, the
[00:39:02] day that they raided the Dolf office, that was that was a
[00:39:05] pretty pretty crazy day for you, wasn't it?
[00:39:09] yeah, so pretty bad, pretty bad day, yeah,
[00:39:12] um, yeah, I showed up and
[00:39:16] uh, I hadn't scored or didn't have didn't do my shot for the morning, cuz
[00:39:20] I, I was expecting to go into work and to be able to buy
[00:39:24] some, I was started going into a panic.
[00:39:27] and uh all i could think to do was to buy fentinol and i'd
[00:39:31] never used fentinol in my life, had no idea how to use it,
[00:39:35] how much to use, for the next two months after that
[00:39:39] um it was all a fog of paranoia
[00:39:42] and uh drug odees, like think i
[00:39:45] overdosed you know at least once
[00:39:48] a day, people lost their
[00:39:52] homes, people got in trouble with the law,
[00:39:56] people died. people died after your after getting cut off from
[00:40:00] your program, people died
[00:40:02] streets, no more
[00:40:05] dying, no more dying, every
[00:40:09] policy change originated with people having the clarity to break
[00:40:13] unjust laws. both Sutherland
[00:40:17] and Calicom published peer review studies, they also say no one
[00:40:21] died while using safe supply in their programs. was
[00:40:25] there any data or?
[00:40:27] policy or medical reason for shutting you down,
[00:40:31] do you think? it was politics,
[00:40:34] it is 100%
[00:40:36] politics
[00:40:38] and fear of public
[00:40:41] outrage. coming up, caving to
[00:40:44] political pressure. our governments don't have the courage to stand up and say, this is
[00:40:48] what the physicians tell us, this is what the science tells us, this is
[00:40:51] working, and were the answers in plain sight,
[00:40:55] the evidence was absolutely. clear that this was a
[00:40:59] treatment that could help people, we tried so many
[00:41:02] times.
[00:41:08] we often very often ask ourselves, is it harder than usual?
[00:41:11] like this spring has been crazy hot, the climate dashboard has
[00:41:15] answer to that. my name is nail shiab, i'm the
[00:41:19] senior data producer for uh CBC news, so the climate
[00:41:23] dashboard is like your weather app, but way better, first
[00:41:27] you'll have a overview of what's happening in the country, the breaking
[00:41:30] records the day, but then you have more information about
[00:41:34] your location, the current weather, the forecast, and then the
[00:41:38] historical trends and the projection. uh to have an
[00:41:41] idea of is the weather getting hotter than
[00:41:44] usual and what is the future temperature wise?
[00:41:48] when you're hearing that there's a lot of records,
[00:41:52] breaking records occurring or heat wave that is coming in, you'll
[00:41:56] have an idea of what's going on around the country. we have data
[00:41:59] for around 500 location in Canada and we'll be
[00:42:03] using that data to produce stories across the country as
[00:42:07] well.
[00:44:23] now i don't have any capacity, especially with
[00:44:26] time in order even think about
[00:44:30] recovery cuz like i'm constantly worried about where the next hits going to be coming
[00:44:33] from. what do
[00:44:36] you say to those critics that say that
[00:44:38] you know people like yourself should just go right in? treatment and they shouldn't be given
[00:44:42] you safer supply of drugs, well they should uh spend 24
[00:44:45] hours in my beats, yeah, and see what they think after
[00:44:49] that, what would they learn? it's a hard
[00:44:52] life, it's not made for everybody,
[00:44:56] every person has different set of problems
[00:44:58] and uh, just slapping us in the
[00:45:02] treatment wouldn't help, mark dejarlet and TJ
[00:45:06] Felix are at the mercy of fierce political debate.
[00:45:10] Chronic drug users seeking access to safe and regulated
[00:45:14] supply to stay alive. I
[00:45:18] don't think that we deserve death. I think we deserve lot
[00:45:21] more than what we've been
[00:45:23] given.
[00:45:26] Opioid overdose deaths have climbed to 18 per day in this
[00:45:30] country. Fentinal continues to flood the
[00:45:33] streets, found in 63% of those who
[00:45:37] die, more than 2.5 million Canadians used
[00:45:41] illegal drugs in the last year, and though any them could be at
[00:45:45] risk of an overdose, based on provincial data, less than
[00:45:49] 1% are accessing safe and regulated
[00:45:52] drugs. I think people have been
[00:45:55] manipulated politically by certain actors who
[00:45:59] want to stoke fear, and that has really pushed us
[00:46:03] back.
[00:46:07] Martin Shechter is a global leader in population health. In the early
[00:46:11] 2000s, he led to landmark studies that examined
[00:46:14] alternatives
[00:46:15] for people with severe opioid addiction. In the first, he
[00:46:19] tested pharmaceutical heroin, also called
[00:46:21] dicetalmorphine. Well, in Germany,
[00:46:25] Holland, Switzerland, England, there
[00:46:28] are, they use this as a treatment for people who have opioid use
[00:46:32] disorder, so the evidence was absolutely clear that
[00:46:36] this was a treatment that could help people
[00:46:39] were the... treatments were not helping, they stayed with the
[00:46:43] treatment far more than people who had been assigned tone.
[00:46:47] the second thing the study found is that it's actually
[00:46:50] cheaper. Shector says access to medical
[00:46:54] heroin was never scaled up because of political
[00:46:57] fear. It has so much stigma associated
[00:47:01] with politics and moral panic and
[00:47:05] fear mongering that um government officials were afraid
[00:47:09] to fund it. So he tried something else, injectable
[00:47:12] hydromorphone, which contains the same active ingredient as
[00:47:16] delauded pills. To our surprise, they did as
[00:47:20] well as people who are receiving dastomorph.
[00:47:24] In 2019, this research prompted Health Canada to approve
[00:47:28] both injectable heroin and hydromorpone for opioid use
[00:47:31] disorder. Despite this, only few hundred
[00:47:35] people, like patients at Crosstown have access to it. We
[00:47:39] tried so many times to make an argument that this should be
[00:47:43] adopted as a treatment. We presented our data
[00:47:47] to municipal health authorities, provincial,
[00:47:50] federal government, but we were unable ever
[00:47:54] convince them to make this uh as useful as it has been
[00:47:58] in Europe. Jordan
[00:48:01] Westfall, co-chaire the Expert Advisory group on Safer Supply,
[00:48:05] pushed for these alternatives. Was that evidence looked
[00:48:09] at or was it ignored? How would you describe you? Having all of that information
[00:48:13] already out there, then not being implemented. It was kind of heartbreaking cuz
[00:48:17] we we we had solutions that were available, we had evidence that showed
[00:48:21] them uh and... was being uh ignored
[00:48:24] and it was incredibly frustrating, that expert advisory group
[00:48:28] ended its work in 2023, the fifth estate requested their
[00:48:32] final reports to health Canada, they refused to share it. We
[00:48:36] then found reducted version on the government of Canada website.
[00:48:40] We did obtain though, clean version the report, and we can now share
[00:48:44] with you what wasn't released publicly. They said
[00:48:48] Canada's overdose crisis is driven by prohibition and an illegal.
[00:48:52] market and that prescribed medications like delated do not meet the
[00:48:56] needs of all drug users. they recommended expanded
[00:49:00] access to more prescription opioids and stimulants, and
[00:49:04] said the government should consider legal and regulated compassion clubs
[00:49:07] and retail stores. the fifth estate though has found no
[00:49:11] evidence that any these recommendations have been
[00:49:14] implemented. prime minister, if things go well with the
[00:49:18] every step the way we need to make sure that a, we're following science and data, and that's
[00:49:22] exactly. exactly what we're doing, despite advice from Health Canada's
[00:49:25] chosen experts, it wasn't enough to bridge the divide
[00:49:29] between science and politics. I'm not a fan
[00:49:33] the federal government's uh safe supply, I
[00:49:37] compare it to given people poker chips, dropping them off in front the casino and saying go
[00:49:41] to town. we in our province, we don't believe there's such a thing as safe supply of
[00:49:44] heroin any of its forms, and even in
[00:49:48] BC where more people are dying of toxic drug overdoses than...
[00:49:52] any other part the country, safe supply is still a tough
[00:49:56] cell. Lisa will point, the former chief coroner, and your own provincial health
[00:50:00] officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, both disagree with
[00:50:04] you, they both want to see the safe supply uh program
[00:50:07] expanded, I just disagree with them on that. I don't think the government distributing
[00:50:11] crystal math, uh, crack cocaine and
[00:50:14] fetanol uh in through coop uh, is going to solve
[00:50:18] this crisis. Our governments don't have the courage to stand up and say,
[00:50:22] "this is what the physicians tell us, this is what the science tells
[00:50:25] us, this is working.
[00:50:29] BC's chief corner Lisa Lepoint resigned, frustrated that
[00:50:33] even expert recommendations in BC were
[00:50:36] ignored. how did that make you feel when you saw the
[00:50:39] government basically undermine all the work that had been done? here was
[00:50:43] panel that had made recommendations, a blue
[00:50:46] ribbon panel that had made recommendations that
[00:50:50] they believed would..." prevent people from dying and
[00:50:54] government just dismissed it out of hand. um, it
[00:50:57] felt more political than based any
[00:51:01] attention to the
[00:51:02] science. there is
[00:51:06] currently no national safer supply program. funding from
[00:51:10] Ottawa has dried up and there's no longer federal
[00:51:13] ministry of mental health and addictions. safe supply
[00:51:17] itself is not a failure. safe supply has never been tried
[00:51:20] yet. safer supply. is a
[00:51:22] failure. To find out why
[00:51:26] government leaders disregarded the advice of so many experts, we
[00:51:30] requested interviews with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former
[00:51:34] Chief Public Health Officer Teresa Tam, former Minister of Health and
[00:51:38] Addictions, Caroline Bennett, and the current health minister Margerie
[00:51:41] Michelle. They all declined an
[00:51:44] interview. Instead, Health Canada
[00:51:48] provided a statement about the future of prescribed alternatives known
[00:51:52] as safer supply. In it, they said, these
[00:51:56] pilot projects
[00:51:57] have concluded, and there are no plans to fund new projects
[00:52:01] going forward.
[00:52:05] Undeterred, we went to a Health Canada announcement in Toronto,
[00:52:09] touting new money for the toxic drug and overdose
[00:52:12] crisis. In the place the
[00:52:16] health minister, parliamentary secretary, Maggie Chee. Funding will
[00:52:20] provide a wide range of urgent interventions for those affected by
[00:52:24] the illegal toxic drug supply and overdose crisis. Health Canada
[00:52:27] earmarked more than $36 million for
[00:52:31] projects, but no mention anywhere of safe supply.
[00:52:35] I wonder if you can tell us if the government has given up on prescribed
[00:52:38] alternatives and safe supply, is is that the end of that program? Indeed, this
[00:52:42] is a, this is announcement I think that really gives hope to lot of communities, it is a
[00:52:46] whole of government approach right, we are working with all partners, but to the question
[00:52:50] though, are we going to see any new funding for safe supply or is that
[00:52:54] the end of funding for those programs? again, i think it it's it's one of those
[00:52:58] uh cases, when we talk about addiction and and uh the
[00:53:01] overdose crisis, we really have to work with all partners on this, but what do you say to
[00:53:05] people who use drugs who may not be a position to get into treatment who may now
[00:53:09] have to turn to the streets because they can't get safe alternative? that's
[00:53:13] an excellent question. i think this is when community partners really um stepped
[00:53:17] up right? but will communities
[00:53:21] and provinces support safe supply if the federal government isn't
[00:53:25] willing to? i approach parliamentary secretary Maggie Chee one
[00:53:29] more time. i just wanted to follow up just to get a sense if there is any more
[00:53:33] information on prescribed alternatives and refer to buse, do
[00:53:36] apologize, i need to run back to the writing, okay, let's let's refer you to the media
[00:53:40] person cuuse i i don't want to give you a brush off quest
[00:53:42] answer,
[00:53:51] what's your message to you, the politicians and the the people in charge these things that could
[00:53:55] expand the program, they
[00:53:59] should open more programs, it changed my
[00:54:03] life.
[00:54:06] 'everybody is somebody's sister or
[00:54:09] brother and it's just as easy
[00:54:12] as then to come down here and do the same things i
[00:54:16] do, was offered again, i'd you be right
[00:54:20] on there, need
[00:54:21] i'd help, be on we
[00:54:22] it, need we a clean supply, and we're not
[00:54:26] getting
[00:54:33] it, throughout it all, tj'. Felix is still holding to
[00:54:37] hope. I mean, it wasn't a solution at all,
[00:54:40] tying like livelihood up in politics and it's it's got to end,
[00:54:44] it's just not right. I mean, do you hope that people
[00:54:48] can overcome the stigma around people use drugs? I'd be dead by
[00:54:52] now if I didn't think so.
[00:54:55] I don't want to live a world where that's not possible. We
[00:54:59] ever hope to have capacity, work on ourselves
[00:55:02] and even think about recovery. you
[00:55:05] need to be given like you
[00:55:08] know some
[00:55:11] grace.
[00:55:21] Hi there,
[00:55:21] Canada. The
[00:55:25] funny, not so funny thing about the world right now is
[00:55:29] the thing you maybe didn't see coming.
[00:55:32] My favorite word, tariff. minimum 10% tariff
[00:55:36] on all imports, we're already hearing about layoffs, he is
[00:55:40] trying to break us, so you have
[00:55:44] questions: how should Canadians be preparing for that next trip?
[00:55:48] how seriously are you taking this threat? how is hamilton bracing for tarif impact? and
[00:55:52] while your elbows have been up, elbows up, for
[00:55:56] us, it's the sleeves rolled up, because you
[00:56:00] need answers. our journalists countrywide
[00:56:04] and all over the world. are on the case, Canada, we
[00:56:08] got you, and we are right there, right beside
[00:56:11] you trying to make sense of it with
[00:56:14] you.