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00:00:09of
00:00:11of
00:00:33On this edition
00:00:34of the fifth estate, we're in Vancouver's downtown east
00:00:38side, the epicenter of a poison drug crisis in
00:00:41Canada. Since 2016, more than 4,000
00:00:45people have died of opioid overdoses in this city. More
00:00:49than 50,000 across Canada, the main killer is
00:00:52Fentinel. IA was
00:00:56overdosing like upwards of twice a day, I think the... that i'm
00:01:00going now like
00:01:00in i could die any day
00:01:03in now down here it's regression let
00:01:06panicked response that involved prescribing millions of
00:01:09pills it wasn't working the dose was too low we're
00:01:13spending hundreds of millions of dollars on our treatments and they're not
00:01:17of working and sometimes ended up in the wrong hands these guys are
00:01:21counting pills right here there you go did politics get in the way
00:01:25of saving lives i think people have been manipulated
00:01:28politically by certain actors who want to
00:01:32stoke fear, we talked to experts who had the ear
00:01:35of the prime minister, we had the highest people in the government intrigued by
00:01:39of this idea and reveal why it all fell short. safe supply
00:01:43itself is not
00:01:44a a failure, safe supply has never been tried yet. if this was
00:01:49a of
00:01:49of of happening to another group of people and
00:01:50of we could do something about it and we've chosen not to, it's
00:01:53a crases, we need help. i'm stephen desousa, this is the
00:01:57fifth estate.
00:02:11What does a person who uses drugs look
00:02:15of like? It's not always what or who you
00:02:20of think. Each one carries their own
00:02:23story and faces their own
00:02:26of unique set of challenges.
00:02:30often masking years of pain and
00:02:32of trauma at the root
00:02:33of their
00:02:34addiction,
00:02:38a so I
00:02:39of mean even even as we're
00:02:40of talking now, you're already thinking about where you have to go or how you have to get your
00:02:44next uh, yeah, it's constantly on my
00:02:50in mind. of I meet TJ Felix in Vancouver
00:02:52in a Friday in September around
00:02:55of noon. They say they've
00:02:56of already done two shots, just one would have. been
00:03:00enough to
00:03:00of kill
00:03:03a me. some people have this idea
00:03:05of of what a person who uses drugs should look like after taking drugs right? like
00:03:09there's there's no do I look like
00:03:11of kind of a dope? no.
00:03:13in what of do you say to somebody who may have that stereotype in your head listening to
00:03:17a you now? mean, we all we come in all shapes and sizes. mean,
00:03:21drug users come from all walks
00:03:23of of life. i a two spirits,
00:03:26kelmuk, indigenous to the interior bc.
00:03:30"we're each individuals and we have our individual needs and I
00:03:34think um medically that means acknowledging like that we have
00:03:38specific drugs that we use and if we're not given those exact
00:03:41drugs then
00:03:45like treatment doesn't
00:03:47work. They get their drugs on the
00:03:51a street because like so many chronic drug users they don't
00:03:54have safe regulated option. If I had
00:03:58like a steady like..." dose from doctor or
00:04:02something, but that's not something
00:04:04of that's really
00:04:06of possible for me at the moment, it's a matter of life and death,
00:04:13of really.
00:04:20tj Felix grew up beside eagle river and lake in
00:04:23bc's
00:04:24interior.
00:04:28they say they were exposed to drug. and
00:04:30alcohol earlier
00:04:34than anyone should be,
00:04:38on and off, since I was about nine years old, I've
00:04:42a struggled with alcoholism and chronic drug
00:04:45use, you had a
00:04:46a pretty fucked up childhood, I guess you could say,
00:04:49yeah,
00:04:54of by 2007 at the age of 18, TJ was living in
00:04:57Vancouver, creating music. and art a prolific
00:05:01pace,
00:05:03of but also falling in and out of
00:05:05in treatment programs. I think that um, it's entirely possible to be a
00:05:09functioning and contributing member of society while being a... chronic drug
00:05:13user, but um,
00:05:15you know, it's also like very fine line, I
00:05:18think, um, that I've crossed many
00:05:20times.
00:05:24Tonight, TJ is heading to a rehearsal for an upcoming show. Just
00:05:28steps from their Vancouver apartment in the trendy Mount Pleasant
00:05:32neighborhood, they lean into a familiar
00:05:35ritual. Music still helps me get through the
00:05:38day, it's how I communicate really.
00:05:43I love making
00:05:43music.
00:05:51If music is their healing ritual, it's in contrast
00:05:55to their other ritual. Today TJ uses a dangerous
00:05:58mix of fentinol and methamphetamine 10
00:06:02times every 24
00:06:04hours.
00:06:11The euphoria. is long, long gone, I
00:06:15don't really get any pleasure out of using, it's just
00:06:19something that uh, at this point has become a substitute
00:06:23for community and
00:06:25therapy and everything else that um
00:06:29functioning adults
00:06:31you know need in their daily
00:06:33lives. TJ says using
00:06:37also keeps away the painful and dangerous symptoms of
00:06:40withdrawal. 'I would kill myself if I had to go
00:06:44through intense withdraw again, it's something
00:06:47that you avoid it any cost, and um,
00:06:51the worst deepest level of addiction
00:06:55is when you're just using to avoid that,
00:06:59um, it's no life at all
00:07:02really, when it revolves just around you not being
00:07:05sick'.
00:07:17TJ was one of thousands of drug users caught by surprise when
00:07:20fentino began to take over the drug
00:07:22supply.
00:07:26The synthetic opioid which is up to 100 times stronger than
00:07:30morphine was a cheap and convenient way for dealers to make more
00:07:34potent drugs. In British
00:07:37Columbia, overdoses nearly doubled between 2015 and
00:07:412016. and provincial officials declared
00:07:44emergency. Mark
00:07:48Tindal is a physician whose research put him on the front lines the
00:07:52HIV and then the drug crisis in Vancouver. At one point
00:07:56there were two or three deaths a day in the downtown east
00:08:00side and in the province there was six or
00:08:03seven so we knew something had rapidly switched
00:08:07and uh lot the desks had no heroin at all. It
00:08:11appeared that people were now uh using
00:08:14fenton
00:08:20by 2016, fentinel was showing up in two-thirds the
00:08:24nearly 100 drug deaths in the province. the pharmaceutical
00:08:28once used for chronic pain and post surgery was being mass
00:08:31produced by organized crime in clandestine labs,
00:08:35flooding the streets, so 2017 doubled again, 2018
00:08:39and all of sudden we're up to like 200 deaths.
00:08:42year and uh 80-90% were all fentinol
00:08:46toxicology. It had very chilling
00:08:49impact, everybody felt at risk, and and they were at risk
00:08:53if they were buying this on the street. Tindol's
00:08:57patients were among those at risk including Mark
00:09:00dejarle, chronic drug user, he's known Tindle for
00:09:0425 years. I wouldn't be here without
00:09:08him, he uh really saved my life
00:09:12and... "he he did more than what a doctor should,
00:09:16you know, he went above and beyond to help me, and I
00:09:20appreciate that. Tindle's help came a time when the crisis was
00:09:24making daily headlines deaths caused by overdoses of opioids
00:09:28and other drugs, with a public health emergency declared in
00:09:31BC, this is an extraordinary challenge. Overdose
00:09:34fatalities in the province are going up, not
00:09:37down. As the death toll kept
00:09:41climbing,..." Tindle started prescribing patients like
00:09:45Dejarlet hydromorphone pills, an opioid also
00:09:48known under the brand name Deloded. It was a drug already
00:09:52regulated and approved, though not for chronic opioid
00:09:55users. It was uh easy to prescribe, it
00:09:59was readily available, it was cheap, and it was already established
00:10:03on the streets, so Dilotted had already become kind of part the drug
00:10:07economy. Knowing that I could write them a prescription for an
00:10:11opioid that wouldn't kill them. I just felt that was the only ethical
00:10:14thing that I should be doing, for Dejarle, having an
00:10:18alternative to the street supply was like dodging a bullet. What did it
00:10:22mean for your life to be able to have be on that program? Uh... make things
00:10:25easier and uh
00:10:28you know do something that's clean and
00:10:32notes in it when you don't have safe supply or when you
00:10:36don't have it you know in that way where does your supply come from
00:10:40or how how just from the street guess the street yeah yeah is that
00:10:43and is does that concern you not knowing sometimes where it may be coming
00:10:47from uh i try not to think about
00:10:49it yeah you know mean down
00:10:53here it's e
00:10:55let i
00:10:55guess,
00:11:00but these tiny 8 milligram pills couldn't help
00:11:03everyone. for Tommy
00:11:07Cortzaris who's been using in Vancouver for over 22
00:11:11years, it wasn't enough. it's very
00:11:14difficult to um to come off
00:11:17fan and uh
00:11:21and supplement it with some kind of.
00:11:26coming up, what happens when the government turns its attention to the crisis
00:11:29and funds alternatives? will the prime minister cancel the dollars
00:11:33for drugs, just stop it and save lives,
00:11:37and we'll show how the fallout was being felt on the streets. oh, i've
00:11:41seen them exchange bills, i've seen them do crack, and they look around
00:11:45like, oh, nobody's watching, what do you mean, the whole world is
00:11:48watching.
00:11:56Hi there, Canada.
00:11:58Hi, how are you holding
00:12:01up?
00:12:05It's been difficult to say the least. I
00:12:09intend to resign as party leader, as prime
00:12:12minister. The funny, not so funny thing
00:12:16about the world right now, is the thing that can
00:12:20consume your thoughts, is the thing you maybe didn't
00:12:24see coming. "my favorite word,
00:12:28tariff is going to be cracking down,
00:12:32minimum 10% tariff on all imports. some contracts are already getting
00:12:36canceled, facing a potential 25 or even 50% tariff on
00:12:39steel exports were already hearing about layoffs, feeling the financial pain of
00:12:43Canada's 25% counter tariffs. he believes that Canadians
00:12:47would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state. when our sovereignty is
00:12:51threatened, you do what you can, he is trying to..."
00:12:55to break us, so you have questions: how should
00:12:59Canadians be preparing for that next trip? what is your plan? how seriously
00:13:03are you taking this threat of 100% tariffs on foreign-made films?
00:13:07lot of questions: how is hamilton bracing for tariff impact? when
00:13:11we talk about counter terrorists, do those affect you? how much does it cost
00:13:15to be patriotic when picking items at the grocery store? and while your
00:13:19elbows have been up, elbows
00:13:22up, for us, it's the sleeves. world
00:13:25up, because you need answers about your neighborhood,
00:13:29your world, your Canada, and what it
00:13:32means for all
00:13:33of us to say, we are
00:13:36Canadian,
00:13:40our journalists countrywide and all over the world are on the
00:13:44case. Do you think you're going to have to
00:13:47close? I hate to think about
00:13:50that.
00:13:57I'm about 15 km from the Russian border. Where
00:14:01are Canada's allies? Where are Canada's markets? What
00:14:05is this country's place on the planet? It's the uncertainty that's the biggest
00:14:09issue. What is the next thing to happen and what will it mean for all of
00:14:13us? We assume that it will be uh difficult
00:14:16road. Canada, we got you.
00:14:20And we are right there, right beside you trying to make
00:14:24sense of it.
00:16:55Claudia West has traveled the streets of Vancouver's downtown east side for
00:16:5914 years. This
00:17:03is home, the people here, her
00:17:05family. That's going to be lot
00:17:09more homeless people. She is a chronic
00:17:13drug user and three times a day she makes a
00:17:16journey for
00:17:20safe supply that keeps her stable.
00:17:24Bye. When I was really sick, four years ago, they asked me if I
00:17:28wanted to join, and I go, really. Then that's
00:17:31okay too. Here she gets an injection of diacetalmorphine,
00:17:35pharmaceutical heroin. she's part of injectable program
00:17:39helping 83 chronic drug users. this model
00:17:43was the first of its kind in north america but
00:17:47i joined it and it's pretty good yeah it's been
00:17:51keeping me clean for december nine will be four years four
00:17:55years clean from the street drugs yeah so tell me about the street drugs what what were
00:17:59you using before? i was using heroin and fentana
00:18:03yeah and the benzo was in it you know it was
00:18:07getting. pretty bad. In 2021,
00:18:11while in hospital for serious infection, she was approached with a chance to
00:18:15join the program. How does it help you? Well, it keeps me clean
00:18:19from the street sides, which is a big thing, yeah, yeah.
00:18:22Is it about the high or is it about just? It's not about the high, it just makes
00:18:26you, it, it just makes you feel good, like, like, I got
00:18:30stiff every day when I wake up, and the shot loosens
00:18:34my body, yeah, it just loosens it right out.
00:18:37Yeah, all right, so tell me about this poster, yeah,
00:18:41so this is a copy the original advertisement we
00:18:45launched safe supply in, so we took out a full
00:18:49page ad in the Georgia Straits about safe supply and why it was
00:18:53needed back in 2018, 2018, yes,
00:18:56well, while Crosstown had
00:19:00been running its program since 2005, the term safe
00:19:04supply didn't enter the conversation until 28.
00:19:08thanks in part to Jordan Westfall. I guess the message in the middle there is
00:19:12quite clear, people never have to worry
00:19:14that the next tip of beer they drink will kill them. Why can't we all have that safety?
00:19:17Yeah. At the time he was a high achieving university
00:19:21student, but in private he was hiding addiction.
00:19:25I felt at times I was living almost a double life, right? Uh, honor
00:19:29student, sort of respectable, and then the other side, uh, seeking
00:19:33drugs on the streets and just the sort of sometimes agony that comes
00:19:37with it. Westfall got
00:19:40sober and came to Vancouver to tackle the drug crisis. He entered
00:19:44grad school in public health. It seemed very clear to me that
00:19:48everybody was using these drugs that they didn't really know uh what was in
00:19:52them. As a person who use these drugs that when you know what they are
00:19:56and they're predictable uh you're way less likely to
00:19:59overdose. For West Fall safe supply meant legalizing and
00:20:03regulating opioids, stimulants and hallucinagens. He outlined
00:20:07his ideas in this 2018 concept
00:20:09paper, which also included
00:20:13expanding access to the kind of pharmaceutical heroin Claudia
00:20:17West was using at Crosstown. That program proved
00:20:21it, that the evidence proved it. This idea caught on pretty quick. Within a year of
00:20:25us sort of launching this term safe supply, I
00:20:28was, talking
00:20:29to the prime minister about it less than year later. It started to create just
00:20:33rallying cry for people on the streets who really needed this.
00:20:37In 2019, Health Canada created an expert advisory group
00:20:41to provide input on proposed pilot programs. Westfall was
00:20:45made co-chair, pushing for legal and regulated
00:20:48drugs. but he quickly realized the group
00:20:52wasn't willing to go that far. take this drug we already
00:20:55have, just give it out to people and and it's fine,
00:20:59you know, problem solved. the thing is, 50,00 people have died of
00:21:02overdose to preventable death in this country. everything needs to
00:21:05change. westfall realized that even having the ear
00:21:09of prime minister Justin Trudeau wasn't enough. so we're
00:21:13presenting and encouraging safe supply to the prime minister who's asking
00:21:17what's the strongest evidence, what are the options with the strongest? evidence and
00:21:21we, took them through the concept paper
00:21:24uh, but at Health Canada on this expert advisory
00:21:28group, the conversation is different. Health
00:21:32Canada supported hydromorphone pills as safe supply, they
00:21:36were available, easy to dispense, and some research show they led
00:21:39to less street drug use and fewer
00:21:42overdoses, but internal
00:21:46notes obtained by the fifth estate show advisory group members.
00:21:50the potential for diversion as early as
00:21:532019 and highlighted the success of options
00:21:57Westfall supported. We know now, and we knew then
00:22:00that these tablets are not as strong as a drug uh
00:22:04legal and regulated for someone specifically uh using
00:22:08Street Fatin. It'd be like, if uh, you have cup of coffee every morning, and we
00:22:12took your cup of coffee away and just gave you teaspoon of coffee and said, try and
00:22:16start
00:22:16your date with that. Uh, for most people it wouldn't work. but
00:22:20it's it's a fight you want to take on, yeah, yeah, Claudia
00:22:24West also knew that the pills, often called Dillies, didn't
00:22:28work for everyone. One the things we've heard is that people say the
00:22:31people who have prescriptions for delatted,
00:22:34they take those drugs and they sell them, yeah, yeah, lot
00:22:38them do, they yeah, they trade it for dope, yeah, what are they
00:22:41traded for for heroin and coke, yeah, yeah, you see lot
00:22:45of that, yeah, yeah, how often do you think that happens every
00:22:49day, yeah? Yeah, yeah, every day,
00:22:51yeah, what West described is called
00:22:55diversion, the selling of prescription pills to others. This
00:22:59sparked debate about the intent of safe supply.
00:23:02Supporters said diverted pills were still safer than the street
00:23:06supply. But opponents loudly
00:23:09called on the federal government to shut safe supply
00:23:13down. The prime minister has spent $100
00:23:16million dollars on so-called safe supply. turns out they're being
00:23:20resold to other addicts in order to raise the money to buy deadly
00:23:24fentinol. will the prime minister cancel the dollars for drugs and
00:23:28instead put the resources into treatment for addics. mr.
00:23:32speaker, we are pretty fed up with this fight
00:23:36against evidence-based programs that actually are saving
00:23:39lives. we cannot allow the conservatives to take us back
00:23:43to the failed ideology the past, so just stop it
00:23:47and save lives. In
00:23:51BC, the opposition conservatives leaked report revealing the
00:23:54NDP government new safer supply pills are not being
00:23:58consumed by their intended recipients, were
00:24:02being diverted and trafficked, they had proof from vehicle
00:24:05searches. They also identified 60 pharmacies
00:24:09offering incentives like cash to
00:24:11patients. In
00:24:15London, Ontario, where some local doctors had been trying out their own
00:24:19versions of safe supply, diversion made headlines when police
00:24:23seized over 11,00 delotted pills in 2024.
00:24:27the prescription drugs are being used as
00:24:31currency and individuals are
00:24:34using the diverted safe
00:24:37supply to obtain fenol.
00:24:41these guys are counting pills right here, there you
00:24:43go, and in Ottawa's Chinatown, one
00:24:47clinic became a flash point in the diversion to... how they're doing
00:24:51crack right there
00:24:52and a neighboring store owner had had enough,
00:24:56uncomfortable uh, i've had employees quit because of
00:24:59this because they threaten them when they
00:25:01say hey please move
00:25:02from front in front the door at the time fadi daya captured surveillance
00:25:06outside his cannabis shop. people who are going to watch this are going to think it's
00:25:10ironic that you know here you are selling cannabis yeah but you're
00:25:13complaining about drugs yeah but this is not a hard drug cannabis is not
00:25:17an addiction these drugs are addiction that could take
00:25:21control of human. he showed us videos he captured of what he believes
00:25:25are safe supply pills being exchanged in drug deals
00:25:28involving people from addiction clinic few doors down.
00:25:32you've seen people just exchanging the pills that they've just gotten. oh, i've seen them exchanging pills. i've
00:25:36seen them do crack. sometimes these guys, they think they're smart, they
00:25:40step away from the building, they come over here or over here and they look
00:25:44around like, oh, nobody's watching. what do you mean? the whole world is
00:25:47watching. Ottowa city
00:25:51counselor Aureel Troster has also watched first-hand the shift in
00:25:55her community. Immediately, within days of coming into the
00:25:58neighborhood, an entire criminal ecosystem developed
00:26:02around. clinic immediately and it was
00:26:05obvious everyone. you were seeing diversion happening right out in the open? absolutely,
00:26:09we all did. literally we would see people walk out the clinic, pull out their
00:26:13bottle, somebody else counting pills, we would
00:26:16see the exchange. when you were on the panel, none of this came as a
00:26:19surprise to Jordan Westfall. was
00:26:21there a warning or did they have a sense that the version would become issue? yeah,
00:26:25absolutely, absolutely, and i think there was a sense
00:26:29of where we we need to. frame
00:26:33this to the public, so the discussion wasn't, let's try to avoid this from
00:26:37being diverted, let's try to reframe the messaging around
00:26:40it. yep, yep, i'd say that's exactly
00:26:42right. coming up, one
00:26:46vancouver doctor gives patients what they need. this is
00:26:50unprecedented in the history of opiate prescribing, the dilotds didn't get
00:26:54people out of withdrawal, had to switch to a fencial product in order to alleviate those
00:26:58withdraw symptoms that are so uncomfortable for
00:27:00people.
00:27:06Hi there, Canada, how are you holding
00:27:10up? The
00:27:14funny, not so funny thing about the world right
00:27:17now, is the thing that can consume your
00:27:20thoughts, is the thing you maybe didn't see
00:27:23coming, my favorite word,
00:27:27tariff, minimum 10% tariff on all imports, some
00:27:31contracts are already getting. cancelled, we're already hearing about layoffs, feeling
00:27:35the financial pain of Canada's 25% counter tariffs.
00:27:39he is trying to break us. so you have
00:27:42questions: how should Canadians be preparing for that next
00:27:46trip? what is your plan? how seriously are you taking this threat of
00:27:49100% tariffs on foreign made films? lot of
00:27:53questions. how is hamilton bracing for tariff impact? how much does it
00:27:57cost to be patriotic when picking items at the grocery store? and
00:28:00while your elbows have been...
00:28:06For us, it's the sleeves rolled up, because you need
00:28:09answers about your neighborhood, your world, your
00:28:13Canada. Our
00:28:17journalists countrywide and all over the world are on the
00:28:20case. Do you think you're going to have to close? I
00:28:24hate to think about
00:28:25that.
00:28:33Where are Canada's allies, where are Canada's
00:28:36markets? What is
00:28:38this country's place on the planet? It's the uncertainty that's the biggest
00:28:41issue. What is the next thing to happen and what will it mean for all
00:28:45of us? Canada, we got
00:28:48you, and we are right there, right beside
00:28:52you, trying to make sense of it with
00:28:55you.
00:31:20"a lot of times my day is reduced
00:31:22to working on
00:31:26my art and using a loan, like
00:31:30uh, drugs have kind of become like a substitute for lot of
00:31:34important things in my life.
00:31:37i have to do enough drugs to kill that would kill any other
00:31:41person, um..."
00:31:47"otherwise it just isn't
00:31:49manageable.
00:31:55For safe supply to work, it had to reach users like TJ
00:31:59Felix, but they say the types
00:32:03of drugs the program offered simply weren't strong enough to help
00:32:07them. It was a complete failure as far as I'm concerned, it
00:32:10didn't do anything to stabilize me or..."
00:32:15didn't meet me where i was at any way shape or form. if they just gave drug
00:32:19users the drugs that they need to function, there wouldn't be
00:32:22diversion. as diversion of safe supply
00:32:26medications took over headlines and tilted the debate against safe
00:32:30supply, TJ retreated to the streets. i
00:32:34think the way that i'm going now, like i could die any day
00:32:37now.
00:32:46program can never solve a problem that's created by policies. Christie
00:32:50Sutherland is family doctor working in the heart of Vancouver's toxic drug
00:32:54crisis. In the early days of safe
00:32:58supply, she tried the government approved hydromorphone
00:33:01pills, but soon realized at least
00:33:0540% of her patients were not taking the pills she was
00:33:08prescribing. It wasn't working, the dose was too low and it
00:33:12it didn't help the patients stabilize or help them get away from. really they needed a
00:33:16higher potency medication to help them stay away from withdraw. Sutherland
00:33:20chose to end the program after two years and worked on what she hoped
00:33:24would be more effective alternative, but that meant cutting off her
00:33:28patients from delauded, and for some them
00:33:31this meant a loss of income since they were selling the
00:33:34pills. If I was getting free wine from my family doctor, and then if my family
00:33:38doctor stopped it, I would be really angry at them. The violence got to the point
00:33:41where your life was threatened. Yeah, so we had to make the... clinic all
00:33:45telehealth and had to leave town for the safety the staff and
00:33:48myself. instead of backing down, she
00:33:52came up with revolutionary alternative. so we worked with a
00:33:56pharmaceutical company and local compounding pharmacy in order to create new
00:34:00funtional product that's both smokable and injectable. i think it's the first smokable
00:34:04pharmaceutical product that's ever existed. that's not easy. why why do
00:34:07that? well, because we had nothing else at the time. she
00:34:11started off prescribing low doses, but soon learned... just
00:34:15how high some patients tolerance was. my first guess was 250
00:34:19micrograms. based that on the drug checking systems here in Vancouver.
00:34:23um, and the patients who we started said they couldn't even feel it. so you went from
00:34:26250 to 20 thousand. yeah, never would have thought. and so now we have
00:34:30people on 20,00 micrograms of fentinel per dose, which is just
00:34:34astronomical dose that never thought i'd ever be prescribing in my
00:34:37life. to put this in context,
00:34:41getting fentinal at the hospital for a broken leg might be 50. to
00:34:45100 micrograms. Sutherland was
00:34:48prescribing 200 times that amount. She helps
00:34:52just 70 people in her research program. So, for my patient
00:34:55population, there's a rigorous intake process with an interview with the physician, the
00:34:59urine drug tested, they see the nurse, they see the pharmacist, and then we observe
00:35:03them to figure out what their individual dose is, and then they can enter into our
00:35:07fentinal or heroin sales programs where they can purchase
00:35:10their their drugs from the pharmacy uh for a little
00:35:14bit. higher than what is the street cost to prevent them from selling it
00:35:18onward um and but that they know it's a pharmaceutical version the drug with
00:35:22no contamination and it's a a way to exit street life.
00:35:25safe supply are we
00:35:29got supply she wasn't the only one trying to
00:35:33find an alternative
00:35:34to the safe supply program.
00:35:38others faced criminal charges for trying to help users. in
00:35:42october 2023 was arrested for drug
00:35:46trafficking after operating a compassion club which sold a
00:35:49clean supply of drugs to users. they called it the drug
00:35:53user liberation front or Dolph. we wanted to get realistic
00:35:57picture of what would happen if people had access to
00:36:01um regulated supply of substances that they had to
00:36:04purchase. Callcom had seen the
00:36:08impact of an unsafe supply through his brother who began using
00:36:12while working in the trades and recovering from injury. "It's very
00:36:16personal, because when you have somebody in your life who who uses substances or
00:36:19uses substances a chaotic way, you realize that
00:36:22the the most important thing um, when they're in sort of chaotic use
00:36:26patterns is that they stay. with
00:36:30master's degree in public health and experience working and testing drugs at
00:36:33overdose prevention sites in BC, calcom worked with co-founder
00:36:37Aris nicks to create safe alternative in the downtown east
00:36:41side. people really just had no resources are way to keep
00:36:45themselves safe. the government had been doing its
00:36:48own safe supply program with delotted pills. why not rely on that? the
00:36:52drugs that they were providing were sufficient, that that's something that that we were telling them that
00:36:56you're going to give people. drugs that they don't want, the club had to source
00:37:00drugs from the dark web, tested them at university labs and
00:37:04then sold uncontaminated heroin, cocaine and
00:37:07methamphetamine to select group of members. we had
00:37:11exemptions to the laws, we had overdose prevention site
00:37:15designations, what we explained, what we were doing and how it was understood
00:37:19was a form of drug checking for people, we talked to the
00:37:22police, we talk to the health authority, we talked to
00:37:26the local government, we talked to the provincial government, we talked to the
00:37:30federal government. what did you start to see? what were the what were the impacts? we saw that people
00:37:34overdosed way less uh, we didn't have anybody die, but we also saw
00:37:38things that we weren't expecting, we we saw people that worked
00:37:41accessing the club, stop using drugs once they were able to gain that
00:37:45stability and not have to be like kind of flailing around trying to
00:37:49find substances or getting ripped off, people had to
00:37:52commit less crime if they were committing crime, they had to do less sex
00:37:56work, they... interacted with the police less, they
00:38:00interacted with the hospital system less, um,
00:38:04people felt like they were more stable in their
00:38:06lives,
00:38:10like I'd be dead 10 times over if it wasn't for them. TJ Felix was
00:38:14one of just 24 people who were part the first trial. Dolf was like
00:38:18huge, like part of my social life
00:38:21and uh communal like like community building
00:38:25and my my you know... gateway to the community
00:38:29really and uh to just be around people every
00:38:32day. Calicom and Nicks were found guilty of drug trafficking
00:38:35early November, but that's not the end. They filed a
00:38:39constitutional challenge, arguing drug users have a right safe
00:38:43supply. We think there's a real constitutional issue
00:38:47here that like needs to be addressed if we're ever going to get to the
00:38:51point where we don't have thousands of people dying every year from
00:38:54preventable deaths, it's you our friends. our family
00:38:58and our communities who are at risk of dying, the
00:39:02day that they raided the Dolf office, that was that was a
00:39:05pretty pretty crazy day for you, wasn't it?
00:39:09yeah, so pretty bad, pretty bad day, yeah,
00:39:12um, yeah, I showed up and
00:39:16uh, I hadn't scored or didn't have didn't do my shot for the morning, cuz
00:39:20I, I was expecting to go into work and to be able to buy
00:39:24some, I was started going into a panic.
00:39:27and uh all i could think to do was to buy fentinol and i'd
00:39:31never used fentinol in my life, had no idea how to use it,
00:39:35how much to use, for the next two months after that
00:39:39um it was all a fog of paranoia
00:39:42and uh drug odees, like think i
00:39:45overdosed you know at least once
00:39:48a day, people lost their
00:39:52homes, people got in trouble with the law,
00:39:56people died. people died after your after getting cut off from
00:40:00your program, people died
00:40:02streets, no more
00:40:05dying, no more dying, every
00:40:09policy change originated with people having the clarity to break
00:40:13unjust laws. both Sutherland
00:40:17and Calicom published peer review studies, they also say no one
00:40:21died while using safe supply in their programs. was
00:40:25there any data or?
00:40:27policy or medical reason for shutting you down,
00:40:31do you think? it was politics,
00:40:34it is 100%
00:40:36politics
00:40:38and fear of public
00:40:41outrage. coming up, caving to
00:40:44political pressure. our governments don't have the courage to stand up and say, this is
00:40:48what the physicians tell us, this is what the science tells us, this is
00:40:51working, and were the answers in plain sight,
00:40:55the evidence was absolutely. clear that this was a
00:40:59treatment that could help people, we tried so many
00:41:02times.
00:41:08we often very often ask ourselves, is it harder than usual?
00:41:11like this spring has been crazy hot, the climate dashboard has
00:41:15answer to that. my name is nail shiab, i'm the
00:41:19senior data producer for uh CBC news, so the climate
00:41:23dashboard is like your weather app, but way better, first
00:41:27you'll have a overview of what's happening in the country, the breaking
00:41:30records the day, but then you have more information about
00:41:34your location, the current weather, the forecast, and then the
00:41:38historical trends and the projection. uh to have an
00:41:41idea of is the weather getting hotter than
00:41:44usual and what is the future temperature wise?
00:41:48when you're hearing that there's a lot of records,
00:41:52breaking records occurring or heat wave that is coming in, you'll
00:41:56have an idea of what's going on around the country. we have data
00:41:59for around 500 location in Canada and we'll be
00:42:03using that data to produce stories across the country as
00:42:07well.
00:44:23now i don't have any capacity, especially with
00:44:26time in order even think about
00:44:30recovery cuz like i'm constantly worried about where the next hits going to be coming
00:44:33from. what do
00:44:36you say to those critics that say that
00:44:38you know people like yourself should just go right in? treatment and they shouldn't be given
00:44:42you safer supply of drugs, well they should uh spend 24
00:44:45hours in my beats, yeah, and see what they think after
00:44:49that, what would they learn? it's a hard
00:44:52life, it's not made for everybody,
00:44:56every person has different set of problems
00:44:58and uh, just slapping us in the
00:45:02treatment wouldn't help, mark dejarlet and TJ
00:45:06Felix are at the mercy of fierce political debate.
00:45:10Chronic drug users seeking access to safe and regulated
00:45:14supply to stay alive. I
00:45:18don't think that we deserve death. I think we deserve lot
00:45:21more than what we've been
00:45:23given.
00:45:26Opioid overdose deaths have climbed to 18 per day in this
00:45:30country. Fentinal continues to flood the
00:45:33streets, found in 63% of those who
00:45:37die, more than 2.5 million Canadians used
00:45:41illegal drugs in the last year, and though any them could be at
00:45:45risk of an overdose, based on provincial data, less than
00:45:491% are accessing safe and regulated
00:45:52drugs. I think people have been
00:45:55manipulated politically by certain actors who
00:45:59want to stoke fear, and that has really pushed us
00:46:03back.
00:46:07Martin Shechter is a global leader in population health. In the early
00:46:112000s, he led to landmark studies that examined
00:46:14alternatives
00:46:15for people with severe opioid addiction. In the first, he
00:46:19tested pharmaceutical heroin, also called
00:46:21dicetalmorphine. Well, in Germany,
00:46:25Holland, Switzerland, England, there
00:46:28are, they use this as a treatment for people who have opioid use
00:46:32disorder, so the evidence was absolutely clear that
00:46:36this was a treatment that could help people
00:46:39were the... treatments were not helping, they stayed with the
00:46:43treatment far more than people who had been assigned tone.
00:46:47the second thing the study found is that it's actually
00:46:50cheaper. Shector says access to medical
00:46:54heroin was never scaled up because of political
00:46:57fear. It has so much stigma associated
00:47:01with politics and moral panic and
00:47:05fear mongering that um government officials were afraid
00:47:09to fund it. So he tried something else, injectable
00:47:12hydromorphone, which contains the same active ingredient as
00:47:16delauded pills. To our surprise, they did as
00:47:20well as people who are receiving dastomorph.
00:47:24In 2019, this research prompted Health Canada to approve
00:47:28both injectable heroin and hydromorpone for opioid use
00:47:31disorder. Despite this, only few hundred
00:47:35people, like patients at Crosstown have access to it. We
00:47:39tried so many times to make an argument that this should be
00:47:43adopted as a treatment. We presented our data
00:47:47to municipal health authorities, provincial,
00:47:50federal government, but we were unable ever
00:47:54convince them to make this uh as useful as it has been
00:47:58in Europe. Jordan
00:48:01Westfall, co-chaire the Expert Advisory group on Safer Supply,
00:48:05pushed for these alternatives. Was that evidence looked
00:48:09at or was it ignored? How would you describe you? Having all of that information
00:48:13already out there, then not being implemented. It was kind of heartbreaking cuz
00:48:17we we we had solutions that were available, we had evidence that showed
00:48:21them uh and... was being uh ignored
00:48:24and it was incredibly frustrating, that expert advisory group
00:48:28ended its work in 2023, the fifth estate requested their
00:48:32final reports to health Canada, they refused to share it. We
00:48:36then found reducted version on the government of Canada website.
00:48:40We did obtain though, clean version the report, and we can now share
00:48:44with you what wasn't released publicly. They said
00:48:48Canada's overdose crisis is driven by prohibition and an illegal.
00:48:52market and that prescribed medications like delated do not meet the
00:48:56needs of all drug users. they recommended expanded
00:49:00access to more prescription opioids and stimulants, and
00:49:04said the government should consider legal and regulated compassion clubs
00:49:07and retail stores. the fifth estate though has found no
00:49:11evidence that any these recommendations have been
00:49:14implemented. prime minister, if things go well with the
00:49:18every step the way we need to make sure that a, we're following science and data, and that's
00:49:22exactly. exactly what we're doing, despite advice from Health Canada's
00:49:25chosen experts, it wasn't enough to bridge the divide
00:49:29between science and politics. I'm not a fan
00:49:33the federal government's uh safe supply, I
00:49:37compare it to given people poker chips, dropping them off in front the casino and saying go
00:49:41to town. we in our province, we don't believe there's such a thing as safe supply of
00:49:44heroin any of its forms, and even in
00:49:48BC where more people are dying of toxic drug overdoses than...
00:49:52any other part the country, safe supply is still a tough
00:49:56cell. Lisa will point, the former chief coroner, and your own provincial health
00:50:00officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, both disagree with
00:50:04you, they both want to see the safe supply uh program
00:50:07expanded, I just disagree with them on that. I don't think the government distributing
00:50:11crystal math, uh, crack cocaine and
00:50:14fetanol uh in through coop uh, is going to solve
00:50:18this 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
00:50:25us, this is working.
00:50:29BC's chief corner Lisa Lepoint resigned, frustrated that
00:50:33even expert recommendations in BC were
00:50:36ignored. how did that make you feel when you saw the
00:50:39government basically undermine all the work that had been done? here was
00:50:43panel that had made recommendations, a blue
00:50:46ribbon panel that had made recommendations that
00:50:50they believed would..." prevent people from dying and
00:50:54government just dismissed it out of hand. um, it
00:50:57felt more political than based any
00:51:01attention to the
00:51:02science. there is
00:51:06currently no national safer supply program. funding from
00:51:10Ottawa has dried up and there's no longer federal
00:51:13ministry of mental health and addictions. safe supply
00:51:17itself is not a failure. safe supply has never been tried
00:51:20yet. safer supply. is a
00:51:22failure. To find out why
00:51:26government leaders disregarded the advice of so many experts, we
00:51:30requested interviews with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former
00:51:34Chief Public Health Officer Teresa Tam, former Minister of Health and
00:51:38Addictions, Caroline Bennett, and the current health minister Margerie
00:51:41Michelle. They all declined an
00:51:44interview. Instead, Health Canada
00:51:48provided a statement about the future of prescribed alternatives known
00:51:52as safer supply. In it, they said, these
00:51:56pilot projects
00:51:57have concluded, and there are no plans to fund new projects
00:52:01going forward.
00:52:05Undeterred, we went to a Health Canada announcement in Toronto,
00:52:09touting new money for the toxic drug and overdose
00:52:12crisis. In the place the
00:52:16health minister, parliamentary secretary, Maggie Chee. Funding will
00:52:20provide a wide range of urgent interventions for those affected by
00:52:24the illegal toxic drug supply and overdose crisis. Health Canada
00:52:27earmarked more than $36 million for
00:52:31projects, but no mention anywhere of safe supply.
00:52:35I wonder if you can tell us if the government has given up on prescribed
00:52:38alternatives and safe supply, is is that the end of that program? Indeed, this
00:52:42is a, this is announcement I think that really gives hope to lot of communities, it is a
00:52:46whole of government approach right, we are working with all partners, but to the question
00:52:50though, are we going to see any new funding for safe supply or is that
00:52:54the end of funding for those programs? again, i think it it's it's one of those
00:52:58uh cases, when we talk about addiction and and uh the
00:53:01overdose crisis, we really have to work with all partners on this, but what do you say to
00:53:05people who use drugs who may not be a position to get into treatment who may now
00:53:09have to turn to the streets because they can't get safe alternative? that's
00:53:13an excellent question. i think this is when community partners really um stepped
00:53:17up right? but will communities
00:53:21and provinces support safe supply if the federal government isn't
00:53:25willing to? i approach parliamentary secretary Maggie Chee one
00:53:29more time. i just wanted to follow up just to get a sense if there is any more
00:53:33information on prescribed alternatives and refer to buse, do
00:53:36apologize, i need to run back to the writing, okay, let's let's refer you to the media
00:53:40person cuuse i i don't want to give you a brush off quest
00:53:42answer,
00:53:51what's your message to you, the politicians and the the people in charge these things that could
00:53:55expand the program, they
00:53:59should open more programs, it changed my
00:54:03life.
00:54:06'everybody is somebody's sister or
00:54:09brother and it's just as easy
00:54:12as then to come down here and do the same things i
00:54:16do, was offered again, i'd you be right
00:54:20on there, need
00:54:21i'd help, be on we
00:54:22it, need we a clean supply, and we're not
00:54:26getting
00:54:33it, throughout it all, tj'. Felix is still holding to
00:54:37hope. I mean, it wasn't a solution at all,
00:54:40tying like livelihood up in politics and it's it's got to end,
00:54:44it's just not right. I mean, do you hope that people
00:54:48can overcome the stigma around people use drugs? I'd be dead by
00:54:52now if I didn't think so.
00:54:55I don't want to live a world where that's not possible. We
00:54:59ever hope to have capacity, work on ourselves
00:55:02and even think about recovery. you
00:55:05need to be given like you
00:55:08know some
00:55:11grace.
00:55:21Hi there,
00:55:21Canada. The
00:55:25funny, not so funny thing about the world right now is
00:55:29the thing you maybe didn't see coming.
00:55:32My favorite word, tariff. minimum 10% tariff
00:55:36on all imports, we're already hearing about layoffs, he is
00:55:40trying to break us, so you have
00:55:44questions: how should Canadians be preparing for that next trip?
00:55:48how seriously are you taking this threat? how is hamilton bracing for tarif impact? and
00:55:52while your elbows have been up, elbows up, for
00:55:56us, it's the sleeves rolled up, because you
00:56:00need answers. our journalists countrywide
00:56:04and all over the world. are on the case, Canada, we
00:56:08got you, and we are right there, right beside
00:56:11you trying to make sense of it with
00:56:14you.