The committee met at 1:02 p.m.

[N. Sharma in the chair.]

N. Sharma (Chair): Welcome, everybody. I’m Niki Sharma. I’ll be the Chair today. I’m the MLA for Vancouver-Hastings. We’ll do a little bit of an introduction.

I’d first want to acknowledge that we’re all gathered here today on the traditional territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people. We think about that, and I would like everybody to think about that as we do our work.

We have somebody calling in as well, MLA Alexis. We’ll just do, maybe, a quick go-around and introduce ourselves, and then I’ll tell you a little bit about how today’s going to go.

Doug, do you want to start?

D. Routley: Yes. Doug Routley, MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

S. Chant: I’m Susie Chant, MLA for North Vancouver–Seymour.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I am from Courtenay-Comox.

T. Halford: Trevor Halford, Surrey–White Rock.

D. Davies: Dan Davies, MLA for Peace River North.

S. Furstenau: Sonia Furstenau, MLA for Cowichan Valley.

P. Alexis: Pam Alexis, Abbotsford-Mission MLA.

N. Sharma (Chair): Our Deputy Chair, Shirley Bond, will be arriving a little bit late. She just landed in her flight.

I want to welcome you, on behalf of the committee, here today. From the B.C. Métis Federation, we have here Drake Henry, health project coordinator, and Kevin Henry, Métis community health coordinator.

You’ll have about 15 minutes to present, and we’ll leave the rest of the time, about 45 minutes, for a good discussion.

Over to you.

Briefings on
Drug Toxicity and Overdoses

B.C. MÉTIS FEDERATION

D. Henry: Thank you very much. Hello. My name is Drake Henry. I’m from North Vancouver. This is my uncle, Kevin Henry. We are here today to present on the illicit drug toxicity and overdose crisis impacts on BCMF members and partner communities.

So far, the team is myself and Kevin Henry. We’ve actually done some previous COVID-19 project work, and we’ve found a lot of health needs from our population through our previous project work. That’s what we’re going to present today.

The B.C. Métis Federation is a non-profit association that works to ensure the well-being of its members throughout the province of B.C. Through grassroots efforts, BCMF advocates on behalf of its many members living across the province who want to preserve our heritage and share it with the younger generations, as it is necessary for the survival of our Métis people. Through cultural revitalization, gathering community, sharing stories, we want to ensure that our legacy lives on.

[1:05 p.m.]

Our mission, values and vision. Our vision is that of a strong and engaged Métis population in B.C. that is grounded in Métis knowledge, language and culture. Our mission: to work with integrity and collaboration towards the advancement of Métis knowledge, language and culture, wellness and self-determination today and for future generations. Our values are that BCMF has identified values that will be honoured and respected in recognition of our grassroots Métis culture. This includes trust, honesty, integrity, accountable leadership and support from Métis elders and youth.

Before we move on to our membership demographics, I just wanted to also say I’m a former alumni from SFU. I have a degree in health sciences from here, and I’m also currently working on my nursing degree at BCIT as well, so a lot of stuff happening.

K. Henry: My name is Kevin Henry. As Drake alluded to, I’m actually from Saskatchewan. How this came about was that I was doing some of the COVID relief strategies for MN-S out of Saskatchewan, and my brother talked to me about coming to B.C. and helping out with their phase 3 project.

When we started doing the phase 3 and phase 4, what we did was that we started literally taking a survey of our membership, and we identified a high percentage of our high-risk members. So we put together a proposal to the government, allocated roughly $300 per family. It wasn’t so much the money that I noticed where the necessity came about. It was the actual phone conversations and hearing what was going on with these people in their lives. That’s when we realized that this was a very, very in-depth problem.

This actually came about through our COVID funding, which was more a case, I would have thought, of the economic and socioeconomic that followed that. We didn’t realize it was so in depth. It was sort of like peeling the layers of an onion. It just kind of got deeper and deeper, and the truth started to unveil itself, especially when we’d get on the phone and talk with our members.

If you look at our membership demographics, 43.7 percent of our membership — that’s roughly 3,000-plus — is located in the Lower Mainland. We have a high degree of members that are particularly at high risk in in the Lower Mainland, just simply because of the cost of living in Vancouver. It’s very relatable to that.

Our stats on some of the unemployment situations were that first, in phase 3, we were at 46 percent unemployment. A lot of that was due to the fact that we have a lot of people that were either elders that were already retired and looking for extra ways to make money, or we had a young part of our population that couldn’t even break into the workforce for people in entry-level jobs. What happened was that in talking to some of these families, there were just simply jobs that did not exist anymore. Because of COVID, things just shut down and whatnot.

Out of our total membership of this area, we identified that 23 percent were actually at high risk. The numbers were quite staggering once we started actually hitting the ground running and trying to figure out what was the best way to help out.

If you look at our total membership here, our 2022 membership bases, our numbers don’t seem that high if you look at our card-carrying members, our actual BCMF card-carrying members. It works out to roughly around 1,500. You can see, though, that the demographic is right around the entire province if you look at the map there under our membership demographics. Most of it is that we do have a big base, obviously, around the Lower Mainland area, the Vancouver area.

D. Henry: Our partner communities, as indicated on the map, include Dawson Creek Métis Federation, Fort St. John Métis Society, the North Thompson Cultural Society, Nova Métis Association, Old Fort Métis Association, Peyak Li Moond Métis Society — that’s the one in Prince George — Métis Association of Central Okanagan, Skeena River Métis Community Association and South Island Métis Nation. BCMF continues to build relationships with Métis communities and serve delivery organizations throughout British Columbia. Statements of cooperation or memorandums of understanding have been signed with these nine communities.

Moving on the socioeconomic issues and risk factors, recently we completed four phases of COVID-19 community support. We’ve had about the same cohort of members. Some have left the cohort, some have joined, but it has still stayed around the same amount of members. There are 350 families. These members were surveyed throughout all four phases of the program via phone interview.

This is very critical, because this is a unique grassroots approach that allows for relationship building and creates a dialogue where members can actually express their challenges, concerns and needs to someone within the community. They can talk to someone — actually trust that they’ll understand what they’re saying and can take that and put that into a form of action. That’s our unique approach to information gathering and how we get a lot of our data.

[1:10 p.m.]

What we do know is that unemployment, job security, food and housing security were some of the major concerns of our members. After almost two years of the pandemic, 38 percent of our survey respondents were still seeking employment, still now.

Economic instability often leads to risky behaviours, such as escapism through substance use, as what we are presenting on today. These concerns also lead to increased risk of mental health issues, which can lead to self-medicating and unhealthy coping mechanisms, all tying into the substance use and drug concerns.

Kevin, do you want to speak next?

K. Henry: Up next we’re talking about illicit and toxic drug impacts. We did a mini-survey just to kind of get an idea of where some of our members were at. We spent a week or two just sending that out to our membership. The response we got back was that every single person who responded had a family member that passed away from a drug overdose. These were members that were from lower economics, just entry-level positions, to even people…. We had someone within our own office. They had a family member pass away from drug overdose.

In that sense, it just seemed like there was…. The impacts were across the board. Although, economically, yeah, people are more at risk, what I noticed in our little mini-survey that we sent out was that it seemed to be broad spectrum, right across. There wasn’t…. Economics didn’t even seem to matter; it’s just what people were exposed to.

Even speaking personally, for myself, I have a family member that actually ended up incarcerated over drug use and has spent the greater part of his adult life in a penitentiary because of drug use. I see from a personal level too, on that side of it, for sure.

Then looking at some of our barriers to data collection. The biggest thing for us right now is just because we sort of stumbled onto this…. We have a list of barriers — lack of resources, funding to conduct health research, lack of trust in institutions, stigma around drug use and addiction and lack of community services access for members.

The big thing for us, at this point, is we’re not really sure…. We’re sure what we need to do down the road, but for now, priority number one is to try and get some research data so we can give it to the PHO office and we can start getting…. Hopefully, we can give them the right information and accurate information that is able to help them formulate how they design some policies and whatnot, or any policy recommendations that they want to do.

One thing that was really prevalent with a lot of our members was a general trust in anything. That’s what I find…. We were talking with Dr. Behn Smith this morning, and they have their epidemiologists. They send out their surveys and whatnot, and they try to put in what they can with their surveys and try to tape things together, so to speak. But a lot of our members don’t have access to technology to even do the surveys. They’re in remote places. They might not even have an active cellphone.

There are people on our list…. Of our 350 families that we identified, I talked directly to roughly 172 of those families personally on the phone. But probably over half of that, on top of that — we just couldn’t track these people down. So we don’t know what was going on with them. I hate to sound like that’s the worst-case scenario. I’m just hoping they simply had a new phone number, and we just couldn’t connect with them. That was a major issue for us too.

With that distrust, a lot of people are very hesitant to tell you what’s going on personally in their lives. I found in the conversations, when we talked about the economic side and food insecurity, they brought it out themselves. That’s what I found with them. The more comfortable they got with you, the more they just were able to talk.

I think it makes a big difference having someone from within their own community talk to them, because we’re not the police. We’re not the authorities, that kind of thing. We’re there to try and find a way to help these people. I think it opened the lines of communication quite a bit more.

Then, obviously, the last one there with the barriers was a lack of community services, access for members. We did get some feedback on that, but at this point, we’re just unsure, because BCMF is in its infancy. It’s been around ten years. But going down this path, it’s very…. We’re just beginning. We don’t know what it’s all going to look yet or how it’s going to be, because we’re not sure what’s more relevant at this point.

D. Henry: To move on, to what Kevin was saying, the largest concern is that even though we’re doing COVID-19 relief projects, as we completed them, not even related to health, all of a sudden, we’re finding, like Kevin was mentioning….

[1:15 p.m.]

We’re peeling back a layer of onion, and all of a sudden, we’re finding more and more concerns. This is without even really taking a direct look at addictions, so we really want to make sure we can follow these actions and recommendations.

Our last four recommendations are that we want to address challenges with data collection. We want to develop a community health team to assess the needs of our membership. We want to determine which outreach prevention and treatment services would be most appropriate and impactful to our communities, and we want to roll out programs and services urgently.

I would argue that one of the highest recommendations we really want to understand and address is how we want to collect our data and which way we want to reach out to our communities. We want to learn more about the concern we have in our communities. We want to make sure we can dig down and really start to talk to people and not just by sending out surveys because technology isn’t often easily accessible. The best way to approach us is just grassroots groundtruthing.

Kevin, is there anything else you want to…?

K. Henry: I guess the other thing I think about when we’re talking about data collection with our membership…. I found that even with talking with Dr. Bonnie Henry, Dr. Behn Smith even, about their data, they’re basing it…. Their data was really out of time with what they had. They were using 2018 numbers and releasing it 2022.

It’s not that they’re necessarily inaccurate, but they’re just not up to date. Maybe they just don’t realize how deep the problem runs. Obviously, you just have to walk down Hastings to see what’s going on with any of these situations and where it can lead — that side of it.

That’s the big thing. That’s why I sort of…. We have our little step-by-step plan moving forward, but we’re not quite sure what it looks like. We’ve talked about what we want, but we’ve got to find out exactly what’s going on first, and that’s by providing accurate data in the first place.

D. Henry: That will conclude our presentation. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening and participating. If anyone has any questions, please let us know.

N. Sharma (Chair): Okay. I’ll organize the questions.

Go ahead, Susie.

S. Chant: You just basically said you’ve got the beginnings of a step-by-step plan, but you need the data to support it. Are you comfortable to relay what that step-by-step plan might look like?

K. Henry: What I’m referring to is just our recommendations. That’s the step by step. We have an itinerary of how we want to go, but we’re not sure if that means education — like family education, public education. We’ve got to find a way of how to get our grassroots members to trust us in the first place.

It sort of indirectly happened because of the COVID strategy. That’s how this all even came about. We never meant to set out to do any of this in the first place, but it just sort of….

S. Chant: COVID does that to you.

K. Henry: That’s the truth of it, right? It just kind of unveiled itself.

S. Chant: You start exploring one thing, and everything else comes.

K. Henry: Exactly. One problem became ten after a couple of phone calls.

S. Chant: Okay. So the recommendations that you have here are things where you’re at right now. You don’t have sort of a back pocket plan that if you get the support, you’re ready to roll out.

K. Henry: Well, this is our health care team right now. We don’t even have…. In all honesty, we don’t really have a staff set out yet. We had a meeting with Keith and then some of the other admin staff. How I phrased it was: “We’re the two guys with the shovels breaking ground here.” We just stumbled onto this, but we know we need to do this. So if we’re going to get the support, we’ve got to make sure we have things in order before we know how that’s going to go.

It all comes down to education and what we’re going to do with that data, but we’ve got to find out what it is for sure. Even though we did talk to a lot of our membership, when we put out the survey for the drug impact, people were quite open with us. I was pleasantly surprised with that. Maybe just because we had talked to them on the phone, and they felt comfortable. So they went online, and the ones that could access it, did.

Did we get everyone to answer that survey? No. But we’re probably looking at…. It’s going to take a real serious effort on our part for probably a good…. I’m going to ballpark three months, four months, just to gather data, do some data collection and then input it together into a report.

S. Chant: Thank you.

D. Davies: You briefly mentioned about partnerships and stuff. I’m just wondering about those partnerships — regarding if there’s any partnerships with First Nations Health Authority, those kind of partnerships, or within the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. Has there been reach out by the association to help you along, to achieve these goals?

[1:20 p.m.]

K. Henry: We talked with Dr. Behn Smith today about that. She gave us a bit of a strategy on how to do that. We’re not quite sure, because the other part of what got us to the table was that Keith had reached out to Dr. Bonnie Henry, asking why BCMF wasn’t at the table and part of the conversation. That was the other side that got this rolling too. Like I say, this is just in its infancy right now.

N. Sharma (Chair): Great. I have a question for you. Thanks for coming here and telling us about where you’re at with all this. It’s really informative.

I was kind of curious. When you think about what exactly you’re going to be stepping into — first the data, first the understanding, building relationships and trust — are you at the stage where you could give us an idea, maybe, of the types of programs and services that may be useful to the people that you’re serving, and what you’re thinking about?

D. Henry: One common thing that was relayed in our survey was that a lot of community members…. I don’t want to use the term “open secret,” but it’s kind of like everyone knows that there’s a drug problem, but no one’s talking about it.

There are concerns of families that maybe have had someone and lost a loved one due to an addiction — or is battling an addiction or is waiting to go to rehab. It sounds broad, but a lot of communities just really want that awareness of, like: “Hey, there is a drug problem here.” I don’t know what that education would look like, but we need to make sure that we at least raise awareness that there is illicit drug use, cases happening in this community. A lot of people need to have a raised awareness about that.

Kevin, I don’t know if you want to speak more about that.

K. Henry: No. I’m in full agreement. That was sort of the general theme. People just wanted to know that somebody was listening to them, first of all, and that’s someone that isn’t authoritative or that they’re getting in trouble if they tell us the truth, that kind of thing. A big part of this is just building the trust within the membership.

Sadly, unfortunately, we have a high number of members that would require that sort of assistance, education, help. I guess it’s almost like the elephant in the room that everyone knows is there but no one is talking about — until now. That’s why I say that if I’m a little bit unsure of what the future looks like, it’s just because I’m not sure which way this is going to go. I just know they need education.

We’re going to need counselling. We’re going to need, probably, naloxone kits and whatever else. At this point, the big thing is just getting our membership talking about it so that we raise awareness and start getting families on board.

N. Sharma (Chair): Any other questions, members?

R. Leonard: Thanks for coming in today. I really appreciate it. I have to admit that I have a hard time grasping just the Métis Nation. My sense is that there are a lot of different communities of Métis, and you being the larger umbrella organization — and how they come together.

I guess what it boils down to is the question of communication, for me. You’ve mentioned that you’re doing surveys. I’m curious about how you got there. You mentioned different numbers for members and the potential for it to grow. So much of what is going to move us forward is going to be on a foundation of strong communication and trust, as you said. I’m just curious. If you can describe a little bit about that and where there’s a place for plugging in.

K. Henry: Well, what we have…. BCMF itself has approximately 1,500 — it’s a little over that, but roughly 1,500 — registered B.C. Métis Federation memberships. That’s what we have, our numbers. Our partnership communities are our outlying communities, and they’re a part of the BCMF, in a partnership. With them, we’re little over 6,000 members.

What we do, then… We’ll have our board meeting. We have a board meeting on Thursday. Each one of our partners has their representative on the board — plus our board, and everybody…. Thankfully, the communication is fairly fluent, I would say.

Of course, it’s a typical association where you have people that…. There are misunderstandings, that kind of thing. But for the most part, communication has been good.

The big thing for us would be having to deliver a service. With some of the families we’re dealing with, we would have to travel to those communities, because it’s simply more cost-effective for us to go there and help educate the partnership — the board members in those areas.

[1:25 p.m.]

Then we’d work together, hand in hand, with them. It’s going to take a little bit of hand-holding. If we were to put something together, it would have to go that way, just to make sure we’re doing it ourselves until we get enough people on board that can help deliver the program, however that should look like.

N. Sharma (Chair): Any other questions?

S. Furstenau: I just wanted to delve a little bit more into the community health teams. Currently we’ve got 100 percent of that health team here. You’re looking much more at the research and data rather than delivery.

K. Henry: Yeah. The delivery part would be the positive part that happens down the road, once we know what that looks like. Right now we’re just looking at doing the research and data-collecting.

S. Furstenau: But with the intention of ultimately getting into delivery of services.

K. Henry: Yes.

S. Furstenau: Then if you could describe how that would work with the geographic kind of diversity of your membership.

D. Henry: Ideally, we would like to train community leaders — like community leaders of the B.C. Métis Federation community there — by us travelling to those communities and ensuring those services are being delivered, having a system where we can actually check in at least once or twice a month just to ensure services are still being delivered. Whether that looks like the leader of that community or we hire someone within the community, train them up…. Kevin is an RN. I was in nursing school….

K. Henry: I’m retired.

S. Chant: No, you’re not.

K. Henry: Well, I was up to this point anyways.

D. Henry: We have the capabilities to ensure training is completed with our membership. We can ensure that our members are delivering our actions.

S. Furstenau: Okay. Thanks.

N. Sharma (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, on behalf of the committee, I just want to really thank you for coming in and letting us know your journey as it comes to helping your members through this huge crisis in B.C. So thanks for that.

As you continue on with figuring out the data and the relationship, please let us know if there’s something that comes from that that you think we should know about. I think that would be really important. Thanks for coming in.

K. Henry: Thanks for listening to us. We appreciate the time. It’s quite an honour to be here. Thank you.

N. Sharma (Chair): All the best.

Okay, friends.

Interjection.

N. Sharma (Chair): Yeah, we’ve got time. So we’ll see you all back.

The committee recessed from 1:27 p.m. to 2 p.m.

[N. Sharma in the chair.]

N. Sharma (Chair): Welcome on behalf of the committee. We see some familiar faces. Welcome again, Brittany and Kevin. I saw you come walking around here. You’re our second of the afternoon.

I just want to, first of all, maybe do a quick round of intro of who’s here on this committee. Then I’ll tell you a little about our process. My name’s Niki Sharma. I’m the Chair and the MLA for Vancouver-Hastings. Welcome.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I’m Shirley Bond. I’m the MLA for Prince George–Valemount and the Deputy Chair.

T. Halford: Trevor Halford, MLA for Surrey–White Rock.

D. Davies: Dan Davies, MLA for Peace River North.

S. Furstenau: Sonia Furstenau, MLA for Cowichan Valley.

D. Routley: Doug Routley, MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

S. Chant: Susie Chant, MLA, North Vancouver–Seymour.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m from Courtenay-Comox.

N. Sharma (Chair): We have Pam on the phone. Go ahead, Pam.

P. Alexis: Pam Alexis, MLA for Abbotsford-Mission.

N. Sharma (Chair): Okay. So for the record, right now we have Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society. Here we have Brittany Graham, VANDU executive director; Lorna Bird, VANDU board president and WAHRS board president; Kevin Yake, VANDU board vice-president and WAHRS member; and Flora Munroe, VANDU board treasurer and WAHRS board member.

Thank you so much for joining us. We’ll pass it over to you to learn from you. We have about 15 minutes for your presentation, and the rest of the time, we’ll spend in discussion with each other. We usually have some questions and want to understand as much as we can in the time.

I’ll pass it over to you.

WESTERN ABORIGINAL
HARM REDUCTION SOCIETY

B. Graham: When we talked about what to do today, we felt like coming up with a physical presentation (a) might be a bit much for a week, but (b), that it might be better to hear from the actual members of the group and how the group was formed and why this kind of group is really important. So it’s going to be mostly them taking the lead here.

N. Sharma (Chair): Wonderful.

B. Graham: I’m not sure who wants to speak first.

L. Bird: I can start. I’m the president of WAHRS. I was present when we first started WAHRS I don’t even know how many years ago, because I’ve been with VANDU now for 18 years.

B. Graham: It has probably been about 15 or so.

L. Bird: With WAHRS? Yeah. So I don’t know. I’ll just pass it over to Flora for now.

F. Munroe: Yeah. I started…. Actually, Lorna brought me into VANDU, introduced me there, and I started working or volunteering. I worked my way up to the position I have now, which is the treasurer as well as the casual supervisor, if one can’t make it for VANDU. I just got on board with the WAHRS board.

With my view and to see the future of WAHRS is because…. There’s so many Aboriginal people that are being, it seems, targeted for downtown a lot — quite a bit. So that’s a lot of our people going down for no reason. So we like to keep up with that, keep up with what they’re doing.

We like to come up with a lot of things for them that they can do with where…. We have our outreach programs, where they volunteer to make money. Also, we have our sharing circle that we have for our membership meeting as well as the board meeting we have. There are a lot of things.

As the years continue, there will probably be a lot more coming in. I do the Cree class for the people there. I just started that, and it’s pretty good. I constantly have a full class. And we also have Wednesdays, where we make star blankets.

A lot of the stuff that we’re bringing back with WAHRS is bringing back our traditional teachings, healings, whatnot, that we need to do to build up the strength back with our Aboriginal people.

B. Graham: I think one of the things that’s interesting about the group is that a lot of people who are part of WAHRS are from other parts of the country or other parts of the province. So a lot of people…. There are a few people who are from the First Nations of the Vancouver area — the Tsleil-Waututh, the Musqueam and the Squamish Nations — but most people are coming from other places.

[2:05 p.m.]

I think that hasn’t really been reflected in a lot of the policies at the provincial level. For example, First Nations Health Authority only recently started to recognize urban Indigenous people — in the last three or four years — because their mandate was to represent the First Nations of B.C.

There’s a significant population of people in B.C. who come from other parts of the country who are Indigenous and have the same issues that are happening to our Indigenous people from B.C., and they’re sort of being lost in the shuffle. So groups like WAHRS are really important because it allows people to come to those groups and be proud to be both Indigenous and people who use substances and be able to figure out the direction of programming and policies that they want to work on.

F. Munroe: Yeah. Myself, I’m from Manitoba. I’ve been here, I don’t know, ten years now, and I don’t think of it as another part of the world. Aboriginal people — it’s just like we’re all one, so no matter where I come from, I do what I can to help. They are still the same people as us, just different languages.

L. Bird: It’s where I come from. People say their whole life story, so you get to know everybody that’s different. Flora lost a son down here, and I lost two daughters down here, all to the war on the drugs. One of my daughters OD’d, and the other one died of AIDS. One was in ’94, and one was in 2008. So it gives me a lot of initiative to fight with the people down here. If I can help one person, I’ve done my job. I’m a supervisor also for the OPS at VANDU.

F. Munroe: I lost my son in 2018, at which time, too, he didn’t think I was doing anything but just hanging around down there until he started coming there. He was working on a proposal to start a youth program for mental health, but unfortunately…. A lot of things he had written down — I still have some of his writings that he had that he wanted to start. He really had a heart for that, for the youth. He said that the youth were being left behind.

Then we have Kevin here. He’s from further than where I live, where I’m originally from.

K. Yake: My name’s Kevin Yake, Six Nations Mohawk. It’s in Ontario. It extends down through Buffalo, into Ontario.

I’ve been with WAHRS for as long as I’ve been at VANDU, coming on 14 years. I worked my way up to a point where I was president for a year at WAHRS. At that time, we didn’t have any money, any grants or anything like that. VANDU helped out a lot that way. We had a lot of time in our groups to talk about the different cultures and whatnot.

I sort of had a hand in starting the Where I’m From, because when I was younger, I wound up in trouble a couple of times, and I was in jail. But when I got in jail, I hooked right in with the program there, with the Native Brotherhood. I think it’s one of the most respected groups in jail. It’s because of all the different cultures and different tribes across Canada, so people got a chance to share their story about their tribe, where they’re from, as far back as they can remember, right up to the present time that they’re doing the Where I’m From.

I really, really like WAHRS, and I’m still a member, but I’m not on the board. I was on the board of this and doing this and that. There were a lot of things. My plate was overflowing, so I had to step back from some things. Anyways….

[2:10 p.m.]

The talking circle as well. I got that from in prison. It was a bunch of men who were sitting around. It was called tough talk. Guys tend to not talk about their past. It’s pretty hard pulling out stories and stuff. They had the group there, tough talk, a talking circle, and you see some guys start talking. They get more into it and more into it to a point where they’re breaking down. It’s therapy, right? It’s healing. It’s quite a….

People talked about it within the prison. They’d get up and say to the supervisor of the jail…. He used to be called the warden, but it’s the supervisor. They wanted to come and sit in on some of our circles and just check it out. I thought that would be a good thing for VANDU as well. They turned it around to a really, really positive thing that’s a talking, healing circle. It’s every Friday. It really helps a lot of people where I’m from.

There are a lot of things. Over the years, I’ve hooked in with a lot of different groups and that, and it nothing but helped me — these things. There are some pretty tough times down here for Aboriginals, as well, with police brutality and stuff. It seems they’re left back a lot. A lot of the policies and a lot of the turnovers — different things, especially in the Downtown Eastside….

We’ve got another group — the International League of Peoples’ Struggle — at VANDU that we hooked in with. It’s kind of like a sister group, and it gives us a world stage. There are a lot of films, and we read up on what they’re doing and stuff, and it gives us some good ideas for here, with similar things like our fishing rights and everything.

L. Bird: We went on a caravan up north. We went to five different communities. Anyway, we ended up getting a group called EIDGE. That’s Eastside Illicit Drinkers Group for Education. We found out how many people…. It’s almost like….

We went to one place, Fort St. James, and it was just like people were being treated like they were 200 years ago. Where they had the stuff to shoot up, they had it outside the welfare office where there’s child and family…. If anybody went to get any of the stuff, their kids were being taken away. The other place where you could get it was outside the band office. Again, then you’re shunned from the band office. It was just different ways that Native people were being treated.

When we started, in three months, 24 people from EIDGE died, and that was quite a big number. They were dying from just exposure and then the drinking. They were drinking hand sanitizer, stuff like this. Then we ended up starting a sharing program with them.

You were the one….

B. Graham: I think they spoke about two really important things. When WAHRS comes together, you guys see things really quickly. Going back to what Kevin was saying about the talking circles, they ended up having specific ones on health care, and a paper was shared with you about how people felt like they were treated like crap because they were Indigenous. It says Native in the paper.

That came out in 2017, and I think about two years ago there was that massive report that Adrian Dix did about the nurses betting on Indigenous people who were in hospital — on their blood alcohol level.

When that came back to EIDGE and came back to WAHRS, people were not surprised, because they had been saying for years: “We are not getting health care because we are Indigenous. We’re not getting health care because we have used alcohol or used drugs. We’re being treated like shit.” It wasn’t until someone who is very high up had it brought up to them, but that has been happening for eons. I think that’s a really big thing — listening to people.

F. Munroe: At St. Paul’s, if they know you’re from downtown, you’ll be sitting there for anywhere from eight to ten hours before they’ll even look at you, because you’re not….

[2:15 p.m.]

B. Graham: I mean, there are horror stories you can hear from people. One of our drinkers…. She had hernia surgery 25 years ago, and they left a sponge in her. She went in almost every year with excruciating pain, and they told her she was constipated and sent her home with whatever, only gave her an X-ray — “You’re constipated; you’re constipated” — until she stood up in the middle of the ER and screamed bloody murder and said: “There has to be another machine in this stupid hospital for you to look at me.”

When they did, they found she had a massive infection, and the doctor said: “If we hadn’t done something right now, you would have died.” She almost died in hospital despite that infection. That’s only because she was strong enough to push through that system.

There are so many people that have the strength but are just tired from having to do it every day. It’s something that we see constantly.

I think that the EIDGE thing…. Not to push here, but we tried to get them their own presentation, because they have written an alcohol strategy on how to make things better in Vancouver and in B.C. Like, the detox system is terrible. The treatment centre is terrible. And 30 percent of overdose deaths have alcohol in them. But we were told they have to do a written submission.

If you want them to do a real presentation, they would definitely do that. That group is across the province, and it’s only once WAHRS and WAHRS members were going to these places and chatting with people that they were like: “Oh, a lot of people are drinking non-beverage alcohol like rubby or Listerine or whatever because they can’t afford other stuff or because there are such discriminating practices in their towns where you are only allowed in the liquor store once a day.”

In some of these towns, like Lytton, they would actually turn off the ATMs on busy days or at busy times so that people couldn’t access their own money to go to the liquor store. There are some really paternalistic ways that are presenting, specifically in alcohol, but can actually be re-applied to people who use other substances as well.

N. Sharma (Chair): Anything else anyone wants to…?

L. Bird: Well, there are a few different things. Like, in Williams Lake, they’ve got a food bank there. If you’ve got a box, you’re not allowed to get on the bus if you’re Native, so you’ve got to walk the distance, regardless of where you live. It’s just a lot of the things….

In Fort St. John, there’s only one place. It’s a soup place where you can sleep. But if you have any alcohol on you, you’re barred out of there for a week. So if you don’t know anybody, you’re sleeping outside. You’d better hope that it’s not winter.

This is really the honest-to-god truth. This is how people are being treated up there if you’re Native.

B. Graham: If you go into social services, instead of actually helping you, they’ll offer to give you a bus ticket to some other town to get you out of their hair. This is the way that people are treated in this country and in this province.

K. Yake: When I first started, it was the methadone program that brought me there. I came out west looking for a family member. I hadn’t found her, and I ran out of money, so I went into detox and from there to recovery. So it was BCAPOM that brought me to VANDU and all these other groups that were there. I was just sitting in the back at the meetings, not saying anything and just trying to take things in. Some people recognized me and brought me forward. I’m forever thankful for that because….

I had something to say. The problem is, I forgot what it was.

B. Graham: I think they’re going to ask us questions now, so they’ll prompt us into what we want to think about.

K. Yake: So I first started — Lorna and myself…. Lorna and Dave Murray, who isn’t here with us anymore. We went to Regina to accept an award, the Kaiser Award. It’s for work you do in the community — an award of excellence for what you do in the community. It was for the VANDU board and some groups. You go and get this award, and get up and accept and that, say some things.

[2:20 p.m.]

Who was emceeing? Terry David Mulligan. I don’t know if anybody knows him. He used to be on MuchMusic, a VJ. Anyway, we went to the liquor store, me and Lorna, one afternoon in Regina. I got a six-pack or something. She got a couple of tall bottles of something. Threw it in bags and that.

We went into the mall, because there was a hamburger joint in there. What was it? Something. We were going to get a hamburger or something to eat to go, and security stopped us right at the door as soon as we walked in. Because we had alcohol, we weren’t allowed in the mall. We were going to accept this award for the work we do. I just couldn’t with that guard. We said: “Fine.” We just left, but….

Yeah, being judged and stuff like that. That’s what I like about VANDU awards. A whole part of it is that there is no judging. It’s out the window, right? You walk in, and you meet so many people that have similar stories. They come from other places where they’re shamed and everything else in their own community. They ended up out here. They meet a lot of people like themselves. They hear stories and think it isn’t as alien as they thought it was.

It’s these groups that bring these people out to deal with their problems and to see that they are not as bad as they thought they were or were treated like.

L. Bird: You’d think that you’re the only one that has a problem, and you’ll find somebody that has that problem that you have. You find something like that at VANDU.

K. Yake: A lot of people, yeah.

B. Graham: I think that’s sort of how you guys create your activism. It’s that there are a bunch of people that come together, and you start noticing the patterns. Like you notice that St. Paul’s is treating everybody similarly, or you’re seeing the same treatment at welfare offices or whatever. That’s how we can create really great policies. It’s because we’re actually listening to people as they’re experiencing it in the moment.

It allows for us to see the system-level changes that need to happen years in advance, before the system actually sees them. If we can tap into groups like WAHRS more readily, I think there would be an easier way for you guys to move forward and make more adjustments.

N. Sharma (Chair): Open up the discussion?

I just want to start by saying thank you and just acknowledging the losses that you talked about today with your children. We’re all, on behalf of the committee, really sorry to hear that. I’m sure it’s very painful. Thank you for telling us your stories today.

I have a lineup of people who want to ask questions, so we’ll go from Trevor to Susie.

T. Halford: Thank you for taking the time to share your journey, and it’s such a personal journey that each of you are on. On that journey, we’ve heard from other people talking about access to support.

Specifically, I want to ask you guys about access to…. Some call it trauma therapy. If that access is available to people that you’re assisting, to individuals? Are you seeing that help?

L. Bird: We started a trauma — just last week, on Wednesday — therapy group. We’re just learning. They just brought — I don’t know — five or six people in.

B. Graham: Yeah. It’s through VCH.

L. Bird: Yeah. We just started it. It’s a five-week course. We just started last Wednesday, so hopefully in five weeks, we’ll know a lot more.

T. Halford: Yeah. Did you say that was through VGH?

B. Graham: It’s through VCH.

T. Halford: Oh, VCH.

B. Graham: It’s the harm reduction team. Sarah Whidden is the person that’s organizing it. This is the first time that we’ve ever been offered anything like this. I don’t think there is….

L. Bird: It’s their first group too. That’s what they told us.

B. Graham: Yeah. It’s new, and I do think that there’s not enough out there. You know, five people out of the 50 to 60 people that volunteer at VANDU getting into this is great, but it’s still a very small percentage of the neighbourhood. Those kinds of services are not offered almost ever. So if there could be more of that, it would be helpful.

F. Munroe: The thing is that once we get the training, then we can get more people in. The basic thing of it is that the things that would be offered to us, we can take out more to the community, to get them more help that they need instead of being….

I’m also on Our Homes Can’t Wait coalition. I’m sure you’ve heard of that.

L. Bird: I think the allowance is — what? — 15.

[2:25 p.m.]

F. Munroe: It’s off and on, but lately it’s been going up again.

Basically a lot of it, too, is…. I started giving them shit about, well, it’s First Nations…. I said: “This is unceded territory, so why the fuck are we fighting over our own land over people that don’t even own it?” I said: “And we’re the ones homeless?” I don’t think that’s right.

K. Yake: Our Homes Can’t Wait is a group we started. It was started probably ten-some-odd years ago. They were using our space in VANDU with no problems. It gives a lot of VANDU members the chance to hook in with it. Then within the last, I think, three years, we took it on as a group that is under VANDU’s umbrella, like a subgroup. It’s about human rights issues and activism, like we do. There are so many different things. It’s a really good group.

Anyways, I just wanted to….

A Voice: Plug them.

K. Yake: I could say more about it. Don’t mind me. It’s always something — hung over, birthday party.

N. Sharma (Chair): Susie, go ahead.

S. Chant: You talked about…. You’re talking in circle, and something comes up like, “We’re all experiencing this kind of situation when we go to St. Paul’s,” which you mentioned, or, say, one of the services offices or whatever. Do you have a mechanism to pass that information forward to somebody, to speak to a rep from St. Paul’s that then goes back and says: “Hey….”?

L. Bird: Yeah, we have Dr. Wood.

B. Graham: Yeah, I mean, there are well-meaning people at every institution. But even when you say things that are really specific…. For example, like letting people out of their care in the middle of the night, so they’re being discharged at three in the morning and saying that’s really harmful. We’ve had members who have to walk from St. Paul’s to the Downtown Eastside.

K. Yake: I’m one of them.

B. Graham: A specific example is one of them was walking home. He got beat up and ended up in an ambulance and was back in the hospital, on his way. If they had just kept him there overnight, they would have saved the hospital fees for everything, putting him in, etc.

The response from the social workers was saying: “Well, we can’t afford to keep people in overnight” or: “We give people bus tickets when we can.” But it’s in the middle of the night. Why not just let them out at 7 a.m. or whatever time is a humane time?

K. Yake: They kick us out of there.

B. Graham: There are people who want to change things. For example, with the EIDGE group, they’ve written a strategy on how to change many mechanisms in the health care system and the housing systems around alcohol access for harm reduction. It was only until we actually wrote it that people have been listening, but we’ve been saying the same things for years and have been asking for meetings and have been asking for funding.

Now people are interested, but in that process, that group has lost so much life. I could name 15 people off the top of my head of people who drink non-beverage alcohol, who, if they’d gotten the services they needed two years ago, four years ago, whatever, would be alive right now. It’s because it’s never enough of a priority.

Even right now, with that alcohol strategy, after the fact, the city of Vancouver has given the EIDGE group money because they didn’t sign on to the document at the time because they didn’t take it super seriously. But then everyone else is now, and that’s the politics of it. I think if we just start listening to people before we have to spend years writing the actual formal document and just start changing stuff as we go, it would save people much more work.

L. Bird: Since we opened up the injection room — that was on December 16, 2016 — I know over 500 people that have passed away that I know personally. I would know them by their first name, over 500. There are over 70 of them that sat on one of the boards at VANDU. We have a lot of different groups there, and there were over 70 that I could name just like that. That’s just from the war on drugs.

B. Graham: With the alcohol thing, they’ve been pushing to say: “This is important. You should be focusing on it.” There has been no money or time or energy put towards alcohol, but they represent 29 to 35 percent of deaths. That’s what’s in people’s systems at the time, but we don’t really care.

I think it also has to do with the fact that a lot of those people are Indigenous, so it kind of goes on deaf ears. The system continues to be racist, and it’s hard to have those conversations, but it just is.

L. Bird: Once you get all the information out, it’s a lot of the meetings that we go to, and everybody talks at the meetings, and that’s basically when all the information gets through.

[2:30 p.m.]

F. Munroe: They get all the information, but once out the door, it’s left in the room it’s been spoken in.

S. Chant: It’s not able to get acted on.

F. Munroe: Yeah, it doesn’t get accessed anywhere. Just once you leave the door, it’s left behind.

K. Yake: But we carry it on. A lot of lived experience.

F. Munroe: We’re the only ones that live it every day.

R. Leonard: Could you repeat what EIDGE stands for, just so I know the organization?

B. Graham: It’s the Eastside Illicit Drinkers Group for Education. They would be a subgroup of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society. EIDGE. We like acronyms at VANDU.

I think they’re a perfect example. There were more and more drinkers coming to more and more meetings at VANDU. I think in a lot of other organizations, they would push them aside and push them out. At VANDU, WAHRS stood up and said they needed their own group, and when they got their own group, honestly, they’ve just taken it and flown with it.

That’s the thing. People usually have behavioural issues, or whatever you think, when they’re not being listened to, when they’re not being heard. When people are given the space…. We’ve had almost no behavioural issues with the EIDGE group.

When people think of people who drink, the first thing you think of is violence, belligerence, etc., but that’s not actually the qualities of people. It’s just when they’re not listened to or they’re treated like babies or whatever. That’s really the key here. It’s giving people the autonomy to do the work.

L. Bird: And you can see these people, how much they’ve grown just from being heard. When they first started a group, they were shy and everything, and now they can go run a class themselves. It’s really amazing to see.

R. Leonard: How do people come through the door and get involved with it?

L. Bird: Every day of the week is…. On a Monday, there’s the EIDGE group. Tuesday is education. That could be about anything. We have somebody there who runs it, so if you want to talk about something, you just talk to that person, and it just goes on from there.

Wednesday is BCAPOM, which is people on methadone. Wednesday we have our WAHRS meeting, our board meeting, and then on Thursday, we have the VANDU board meeting. Then on Fridays, the WAHRS meeting, and on Saturday, we have WIND, which is Women In New Directions. It’s a women’s group, and we’re trying to start a men’s group. I think that’s going to be starting very soon.

R. Leonard: I guess the question is why. Why are they coming through the door in the first place? What motivates them to come?

F. Munroe: For me, it was looking for something to help me figure out what the fuck I’m doing here or what it is that I might have to offer.

L. Bird: Everybody’s got their own problems, so it’s: where do you fit in? Say a person is on methadone. They might come: “Okay, that’s Wednesday.” Then Friday: “Okay, I’m Native. Let’s go try this one.” Then on Friday they have the one-heart healing circle.

B. Graham: But I think the reason why people come in is the money, right? The first thing.

L. Bird: Yeah, just the $5. It used to be $3. Now it’s $5 for a group, to sit there for the one hour. To a lot of people, that $5 makes a big difference. That might get them in the door.

S. Chant: You’re giving them money.

L. Bird: Yes.

B. Graham: We pay everyone for all of their time.

K. Yake: It’s a stipend for travel to get there, or cigarettes or something.

L. Bird: It used to be $3 for their bus fare. It used to be $1.50 for bus fare. Then your bus fare would run out, so you’d have $1.50 to go back home. That’s with the $3. We just finally raised it to $5. It was $3 for a long, long time.

B. Graham: Kevin, what were you going to say about the stipend?

K. Yake: No, nothing about the stipend.

What ultimately gets people in is that each group will go out into the community and talk to people and put flyers up talking about the group itself and talking to people. A lot of people, believe it or not, don’t know of VANDU. If they’re down in the 100 block, a lot of people just stay in that area, stay in certain areas.

So we go out and talk to people, to a group of them, and help people. That brings them through the door. The $5 is just a stipend. It’s not just a stipend. It’s a stipend, but it’s important for travel or cigarettes or whatever.

[2:35 p.m.]

L. Bird: When we do a membership drive, we have some cigarettes to give them to fill out…. They’ll do it just for smokes or for a couple of dollars. We can get everybody…. A couple of dollars makes a big difference to some people.

B. Graham: I think, also, a big thing is that we have all these things that are sort of to help people in the survival moment — where you come in to get your harm reduction supplies, you come in to use the OPS, you come in to the meeting to get the $5.

Once you’re in the building, you have almost a breath of fresh air, where you’re like: “Oh, shit, these people are my people. They actually are running this. They make the decisions.” This is an actual drug user group; it’s not performative. It’s not like there’s a bunch of service providers who are making decisions for this group on how it’s going to happen.

It’s very much like I can see myself in the person who’s presenting to me. That allows people to, all of a sudden, go: “Whoa.” Whenever you have this, the first time someone comes in and they’re all super jazzed, you almost get a high from them being high on the fact that they can see people, exactly like themselves, in positions of power.

K. Yake: There are so many ways, as well, to get somebody hooked in. It used to be that we had this one thing where we had some certain kinds of jobs and stuff around cleaning and pipe kits and making them. We used to have a lot more, but still we’ve got stuff….

They have to start out at a level. It was called a coffee shift. We never changed. We used to serve coffee years ago, so a person would come in and help out with that, and then they’d help out with other things. It’s called — what’s it called now? — the orientation group. I call it a coffee shift. They would come in, and they’d have to do two orientation shifts. What they do is that the front desk person would delegate small, odd jobs like cleaning up certain stuff throughout the day, in the two hours that they’re there.

The main thing was to get into their ear, the person at the front desk, about what VANDU is all about, what we do there, all these groups — activism, human rights, social justice and all that stuff. It’s just to see if they want to ultimately join, to come and join on. Once you do two coffee shifts, then you’re entitled to do different jobs, to be hooked in with the job…. There’s that thing on Fridays. Then you do pipe kits or whatever else, cleaning or something.

B. Graham: There’s a job for every type of person.

K. Yake: Yes, and quite often there’s hiring for the positions we have, because some people come in and stay this long. With the overdose prevention site, we have the front desk. We have reception. That’s a person who’s signing a person in to go into the back, into the injection room. Back there, we’ve got an attendant to monitor everybody, to watch everybody and make sure things are going well. If somebody ODs, we have a protocol for that that we’ve been practising it over the years.

Not just practised — we’ve had to put it to use. Six years ago, when this fentanyl crisis started, there were two or three overdoses a day in that room. It started then, but it’s still happening. So it’s still very, very important to have the attendant, reception and everything.

B. Graham: I think it should be noted that all the things that you guys are talking about were co-created and collaborated on as a collective. We’re a democracy, and we make decisions together. The reason why we’re able to continue to grow is that people see that there’s not one person making unilateral decisions. We’re all making decisions together.

That sort of helps create the autonomy of a group like WAHRS or a group like VANDU, to work together. That’s why we set this up, like the VANDU one. Putting money and time into creating drug-user groups is really important, because it gives people the space to actually be themselves with their colleagues and create actionable items.

K. Yake: They become allies.

L. Bird: We hire them, and they get four-hour shifts. For the reception and for the front desk, it’s $11 an hour. So you get $44 cash. For a lot of people, that’s pretty good money to just get. Then if you work in the injection room, which we also have, we train everybody up to do Narcan, naloxone. We train every person that works there. They’re all trained for that.

[2:40 p.m.]

We have the injection rooms, and they make $13 an hour. They’re all four-hour shifts, and it’s all cash. We fill up the hole. We’re open from ten to ten every day except Thursday, because we have the board meeting. But we open from four o’clock to ten that day.

K. Yake: We started a drug group. It’s called drugs…. What’s the acronym?

L. Bird: The safe supply…. I can’t remember.

Interjections.

B. Graham: We came up with the name before the thing. It was drug revolutionaries….

L. Bird: And safe supply is the last part.

Drugs have the…. Like D-R-U-G-S-S.

B. Graham: Basically you want to start a group. VANDU will let you, as long as you have the idea of what your budget would be, how much time, and if you can get people in it. We’ll give anyone a chance to have a pilot.

Interjections.

N. Sharma (Chair): All right, I’m going to try to get through. We’ve got some more questions here. We’ve got Doug and then Sonia.

D. Routley: Thanks very much — a lot. Do you have access to legal advice when these things happen and help in terms of putting forward human rights complaints if these discriminations happen?

L. Bird: For us, all we do is…. If there’s something, we just do it, and then ask questions later.

K. Yake: That’s the activism.

Interjection.

K. Yake: We have lawyers through Pivot.

B. Graham: Yeah, we do rely on Pivot quite a bit. Our general policy of things is…. We aren’t like an individual advocacy group. So if someone comes in with an individual complaint about their housing, we try to put them in the right direction of someone that that’s their skill. But when we see them coming to our Tuesday group, or whichever group, and we see multiple people with similar complaints, then we create an advocacy campaign that is actionable at a system level instead of at the individual.

We don’t have the resources to do the individual work, but we do have the resources to start pulling people together to do that larger-scale work, and in the end, it would be more beneficial to more people. But yeah, Pivot is our main people that we work with.

S. Furstenau: Again, I’m just really recognizing the losses that you’ve talked about and how significant that is. In the face of systemic discrimination, in the face of racism, in the face of systems that should be supporting you that have failed, what I see and hear from you is that you are creating these systems and structures, and you are creating space and safety for people in your community. I just want to really acknowledge and recognize that.

A Voice: Thank you.

S. Furstenau: Brittany, last time we talked about funding. Can you give us a bit more of a sense of funding? There’s a lot happening here. You’re travelling. You’re making food. I’d be really interested in that, and also just: what are the struggles around funding?

B. Graham: So for VANDU, we are, I guess, the umbrella organization for all of these organizations. There are three actual organizations — VANDU, WAHRS and BCAPOM — that are their own societies, but we have all of our funding in one pot. We can get into the dirty of it all, but everyone has their own contracts, etc. The general VANDU contract that we’ve had almost consecutively since 2000 — I think that was when we got it — would have been from VCH, and that was about $250,000.

Has it increased? It has continued to stay around the same. The increases we get are based off of inflation. They do like a 1 percent to a 4 percent, depending on the year. Right now, I think we’re closer to like $260,000, in the end — whatever years later.

F. Munroe: Basically, VANDU is the lowest-paid front-line workers in the Downtown Eastside. We still go to work every day no matter what, because we care about the people. It’s not about the money. It’s the people that we look…. They depend on us too.

B. Graham: In those scenarios…. With our OPS, we said there’s no way we can do more. We mentioned, at that time, that in 2014, we got a letter from VCH saying: “We’ve been told you have an unsanctioned facility for injection. That’s not okay. If you do not close it, we will take away your money.”

[2:45 p.m.]

That was really our only chunk of money we were having, so we had to make a hard decision to do that. We did do some van mobile injection at the same time, but we did have to close the main one.

Then two years later we got a call. I was at work on Monday, and left. On Tuesday, they were called by VCH to say: “We want you to open an OPS. Can you do it in 24 hours?” When I got to work on Wednesday, we had a facility in our back….

L. Bird: We opened up the room in 24 hours.

B. Graham: So within that, we got a contract for that. It’s roughly the same amount as our original contract. So we have about…. Our core, core funding now would be just shy of $600,000. But when you have 50 to 60 volunteers every day doing all of the programming we do, it’s just….

The decisions are that we either cut back our hours and pay people more or be as open as we can be and pay people less. Every time it comes to the board, there’s no question about changing the hours, so we always have to sort of adjust things.

L. Bird: We make it work.

B. Graham: But yeah, in general, it’s a stipend between $11 and $15 an hour, depending on your position and your qualifications for that position.

L. Bird: Supervisors get $15 an hour. That’s the highest pay.

F. Munroe: And we only have three of them.

B. Graham: There are benefits because it is under the table.

L. Bird: Yeah. If you go to the other places, their supervisors are getting anywhere from $25 to $30 an hour. We’re getting $15, but we still work it, you know.

B. Graham: We try to do as much as we can with what we can, but our core funding and most of our money…. There are things that come in for certain projects or whatever, but about 95 percent of our funds are coming from VCH and from those two contracts.

F. Munroe: With our travel, we usually have to apply for funding to go to somewhere to go, which is…. What is that called again — the travel and you have…?

B. Graham: Like the caravans or…?

F. Munroe: No, the funding — like, you apply for funding to see if you can go.

B. Graham: A grant.

F. Munroe: Yeah — sort of like a grant. We have to provide a thing to say where we’re going to go, whether we get accepted or not. Then we usually get….

L. Bird: Yeah. We’re lucky if we can get accepted so that our hotel is paid for or our flights are paid for so that we can go to a conference.

B. Graham: Or we’ll have a bigger grant. Currently, we just had a meeting two weeks ago with three different regions — VCH, Fraser Health and Island Health. We tried to get as many drug user groups — representatives from each one — into a meeting room. That cost us about $25,000 on a really small budget to gather in the same room for one day. But we really had to beg OERC to give us that money.

If we increase those regional moneys, it makes it a lot easier. For example, at that one-day conference, the things that came up were that a lot of these smaller groups don’t have the same capacity around governance structures or that it’s not okay for a person to be calling themself an ED and a board member. Those are conflicts of interest. Our board members are pretty well established in understanding all of that stuff. So that kind of training needs to happen in other places, and we can’t, obviously, take that on.

But these are things that…. If there were money put aside for actual groups to run and there were money put aside for capacity-building, we could really build a network really quickly in this province that was well functioning and understanding of the issues across the province.

N. Sharma (Chair): Shirley, go ahead.

F. Munroe: It’s nice to have the recognition, though — like, even overseas — of VANDU. They’ve heard of us, so we’ve gotten quite a few people coming in to see where we work.

L. Bird: We’re the only one that’s run by peers in the world.

F. Munroe: Yeah, peer group–led.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Well, I’ll just add my thanks to everyone else’s. We appreciate hearing your experiences and the work that you’re doing. Actually, your last comments were exactly where I was going to go, and that is a network of support across the province.

We’ve learned some things in the information we’ve received over the last number of weeks and months. Indigenous people are impacted 5.4 times more often with a drug overdose death, and First Nations women in particular are far more likely to die of a drug overdose. So I think the things that you are learning and working on are essential to understanding what we’re going to do to help some of the most at-risk people.

[2:50 p.m.]

That network…. For example, I live in the North. Do you have connections, for example, with Carrier-Sekani or other organizations across the province? I don’t know that we have amazing networks like this in that part of British Columbia. I could be wrong. That’s probably something we need to be looking at in terms of how people are supported if you’re not in an urban Aboriginal setting.

Maybe just a little bit about the networks. Do they exist? Do you provide advice in terms of how other people can best support Indigenous people? Specifically, what are the things we need to do to provide…?

F. Munroe: The one thing I can say about Indigenous people is the fact…. Our own history…. We have never had alcohol or drugs in our DNA ever, and this is why we are so addicted to it now, because we don’t have the structure in our DNA to fight it. That’s why we are more addicted.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): More susceptible.

F. Munroe: More susceptible to it, more addicted and more vulnerable to die from it.

B. Graham: I also think the system is a mess too — like, not putting it on the individual. If you’re living in a northern place…. For example, if we think of VCH, there are lots of places in the VCH region that are rural. So where are these people going to go to get treatment or detox, if that’s the direction they want to go, or even get harm reduction services or methadone clinics or any of those things?

Quite often, for detox specifically, they’ll send them to Vancouver. People will actually come to Vancouver and go to detox. It doesn’t work out for them for whatever reason, because life happens. Then they get stranded in Vancouver for weeks, months, whatever. That system isn’t very well developed. Not everyone wants to be in those places in order to do that structure. But growing that system is important.

Beyond that, there are groups starting in other parts of the province. For example, in Prince George…. Their name is UNDU, but I’m not sure what it stands for. It’s one of their drug-user groups. In Quesnel, I think there are three different groups trying to grow. We’re aware of places that are trying.

For example, the funding that’s out there specifically for drug-user groups is very small. So they can only tap into — what? — $30,000 to $50,000, and that’s not enough to really do anything at this point. Even renting a place in most places, the cost….

L. Bird: A lot of the problem, too, is that there are no places for couples. If they want to go into treatment, there might be just this one little window. They want to get in there now, and there’s no place for them, and that might be the only time they’ve ever tried. Or they have the initiative to want to get in there, and they’re turned away. That’s what we need more of — places that couples can get into.

Sometimes they’ll say: “Okay. Call back tomorrow. Call back next week.” These people aren’t going to wait. That might be the only window they have, where they’ve got enough courage to get themselves into a place, and they’re turned away.

B. Graham: When you speak to people, I think the thing you realize is that the way the system is set up is a way of grading people to go into a version of recovery that we all think…. Basics of sobriety is what the system thinks is the next step where, when you actually ask people what their goal is when they’re going into detox, quite often it’s to reduce their drinking, to reduce their drug use to a safer level, to take a break because they need a break.

L. Bird: To get a home.

B. Graham: To get a home. There’s a family member that’s worried about them. Their end goal actually isn’t sobriety. The big thing here is…. The way that these programs work…. For example, going into detox, if you go two or three times a year, they might actually tell you that you can’t go again because you’ve gone too many times this year. In the mind of the person who’s running it, it’s like: “You’re not learning your lesson and you’re not stopping, so we’re punishing you for not going.”

But the person themselves is going into that program with a completely different mindset. They say: “I’m coming in. I’m using it. I’m going back to the life I lead, with less drug use or less alcohol use.” And that was their goal. The system isn’t listening to people and is thinking that everyone wants to be sober. There are people that want to be that way, but there are lots of people that don’t. If we don’t start thinking about that, then we’re never going to actually solve anything, because we keep putting people into a box that they don’t want to be in.

[2:55 p.m.]

N. Sharma (Chair): I think we have time for one more question. I just want to know, really…. It’s really great to hear your perspectives, and one of the things we’re tasked to do as this committee is to give our recommendations based on what we’re learning and hearing from people like yourselves on how we stop the overdose crisis deaths from happening at such a high rate — and at all, if we can. What are the things that we could do?

I’m just really curious, from each of you from WAHRS, if you could just tell me what, from your perspective, would be that thing that you want us to know about, that you think would help with that. If each of you could maybe say that, I think that would be helpful.

K. Yake: Since April of 2016, it’s been declared a state of emergency for the fentanyl crisis and whatnot. So we wanted action right away. In fact, we had a meeting, a board meeting, and our funder was there, from Coastal Health. We were talking about it. We were recognizing these overdoses more and more, because we had an unsanctioned injection room, which we always, always had, because we believe in it. We always kept records, because we were always trying to fight for more injection rooms.

The thing is that nobody is…. There have been thousands and thousands of people come through VANDU to use that room. We haven’t lost anybody. So we’re doing the right thing in monitoring and talking and giving education around harm reduction and using safely. But still the numbers are climbing, climbing. People are dying from these overdoses. These are the people that use alone and stuff for whatever reason. They only got a little bit, or they’re just…. Nobody knows, or whatever it is. It’s about reaching those people.

I feel we’re doing our part, in the sense of the overdose prevention sites and the practices we have here, the protocols and stuff and the education and everything. It’s just how to reach those other people. Like I say, we’re doing our part. I think the government needs to step up a lot more and recognize the fentanyl part. We can only do so much about what’s being made, what’s coming in to the country.

I think we’re doing our part, is what I’m saying. Sometimes it’s pretty hard when you lose so many people that you’re so, so close to, that you met and got along with, that you work with. Now they’re not here. It keeps you going, keeps you wanting to do more and more. But sometimes we get…. We feel like we’re coming up to a wall. Still, we get enough people to try and push that wall down. I think it’s the government that needs to step up a lot more. They don’t see it like that.

F. Munroe: For me, it’s…. Even though they go to treatment, they want to lessen what they’re doing, because they know it’s not good. But where they live, too…. When they get out, they’re back in the same boat as where they went. They keep going back, but there’s no support in it. They’re not given support in anything. As soon as you’re done: “Okay, fine, you’re on your own. Bye. See you.” That’s that.

So why they keep going back is to try, try and keep making it, to give themselves a sense of trying to do something. But when you don’t have that support getting out, you’re going to go back to the same thing you’re doing again. That’s why they keep going back.

There’s nothing. There’s nobody, nowhere that I have ever seen downtown or anything with any kind of a support program for them when they get out, although VANDU is there. We’re there. We have our meetings that they come to, but they’re still going to see the addicts. They’re still going to get that temptation. There is absolutely nothing there for them when they get out.

So you’re back in the same boat. You may be clean for a few months at a time. Six months is great, when you do. Then you’re back to where you started, because you’ve got no fight in you anymore. No matter how much you try, it’s just…. You’re fighting a losing battle.

L. Bird: When we go, “You have a room downtown,” on welfare day, they don’t allow you to have any visitors. Therefore, you’re putting a person there to use by themself, so they’re going to die. They’re going to OD. There’s not anybody there to help them. Almost all of the places down there that rent, these SROs, that’s what they…. They’re not allowed to have visitors on welfare day. It’s stupid.

[3:00 p.m.]

For places, just like VANDU…. I mean, we need more places where couples could get into — but now, today, not a week from now or two weeks. It’s just like a little window. That person might…. The only time that they’re going to try to sober up or straighten out is right now. If you turn them away, they might not ever get a chance again.

N. Sharma (Chair): We’re just up on time. I want to thank you again, on behalf of this committee, for helping us learn from you. It’s been really valuable. We wish you all the best.

F. Munroe: There’s one thing I wanted to add, though. It’s the fact of how child and family services works. The 19-year-olds that they’re aging out…. They don’t give them any kind of support, education, anything. As soon as you’re 19, you’re out the door, and that’s that. You know where they come? It’s where we are.

What’s the use of having child and family if they’re going to go right to where…? They’re trying to prevent…. They’re just not helping them. You’re putting those 19-year-olds back into the risk of where their parents….

L. Bird: They’re taking them away from the parents when they’re 12 and 13 years old. When they’re 19, they’re put back on to the street, with no help.

B. Graham: You know, a real life thing that comes up quite often is…. They take the kid away and give the foster family — what? — 800 bucks or 1,200 bucks a month to look after that kid. If we made a system in which we paid these mothers and fathers some funds to look after their kids, that’s a better system.

L. Bird: Yeah. They have real love.

B. Graham: I think we are in a place where stigma continues to happen. Taking away kids from a place where drug use is happening is the thing that we think of, but most of the time, when people have love, they’re better off, even if there are drugs in the family. It’s the same thing with….

We, as a system, need to tell these systems that they need to change. With all the doctor stuff, all the colleges stuff…. There’s a lot of guidance and guidelines out there, but doctors still are going to think in their head: “This person just wants drugs, and I’m not fucking giving them to them.” The thing that needs to happen is a policy change.

F. Munroe: The way that they should look at it is…. Help the parents. Work with the parents. Don’t take their kids away. Work with them to make it better for themselves and for their kids. Taking them away is just breaking them apart, and then that hatred starts when they’re growing up.

L. Bird: It’s going back to the ’69 scoop.

F. Munroe: Put somebody in there to work with them. Have a support program for them. That would be the best thing for that, instead of ripping the families apart.

L. Bird: Thank you for listening to us.

N. Sharma (Chair): Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it.

Do people want a couple of minutes break before we go to the next one? Yeah. Okay. Why don’t we start in five minutes. Is that good? Yeah.

The committee recessed from 3:03 p.m. to 3:11 p.m.

[N. Sharma in the chair.]

N. Sharma (Chair): Welcome to Chris Livingstone, from the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre. You’re our final presenter for today.

We’ll just do a little bit of intros. My name is Niki Sharma. I’m the MLA for Vancouver-Hastings and the Chair.

Maybe we’ll start over there and do a quick….

S. Furstenau: Sonia Furstenau, MLA for Cowichan Valley.

D. Davies: Dan Davies, Peace River North.

T. Halford: Trevor Halford, Surrey–White Rock.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Hi. I’m Shirley Bond. I’m the MLA for Prince George–Valemount and the Deputy Chair.

D. Routley: Doug Routley, Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

S. Chant: I’m Susie Chant, North Vancouver–Seymour MLA.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

N. Sharma (Chair): Okay. We have Pam on the phone.

Go ahead, Pam.

P. Alexis: Pam Alexis, Abbotsford-Mission MLA.

N. Sharma (Chair): Wonderful.

Chris, we’ll give you about 15 minutes, or around there, for your presentation. We are a committee that definitely has lots of questions, so we’re leaving a lot of time for discussion at the end. So about 45 minutes for that.

I’ll pass it over to you.

VANCOUVER ABORIGINAL
COMMUNITY POLICING CENTRE

C. Livingstone: Great. Thank you, everybody, for the invitation.

I recognize Shirley’s name. I think you may have signed off for funding for us in the past or with one of the organizations that I work with in the Downtown Eastside.

I’m glad that you guys all took the time to come here onto the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

My name is Ukws Kots’a, from the Nisg̱a’a Nation. It means “cutting the tree branch towards the water.” Although I am Nisg̱a’a, my colonial name is Chris Livingstone. In the community of Vancouver, I’m actually running for the park board commission, with the COPE party. I’ve been involved in organizing in Vancouver since 2002.

I’m a co-founder of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society. I was their community organizer for the first eight years of their existence, starting as a member, being homeless, using drugs on the streets, travelling to Vancouver from a different town, which a lot of…. That’s really the same pattern that I think we’re all sort of concerned about.

I did write a lot of notes. I’m not going to use a lot of them.

Back in 2002, I was a homeless person. I had used drugs. I’ve noticed quite a few differences from that time to where we are now. I think you guys are familiar with the story. I believe the First Nations Health Authority does a great job of creating the context of how problematic substance use has evolved over time, starting within history and connections to racism.

[3:15 p.m.]

From personal experience…. Like I said, in 2002, I was here. People were using cocaine. People were using heroin. They were using speed, to some degree. Because of access and prohibition, there started to become more troublesome drugs that were created, like crystal meth. Well, crystal meth is the big one. Eventually, fentanyl is where we’re at right now.

That’s what I was trying to think about. What would I be able to say to all of you or whomever I’m talking to?

It seems pretty clear that if we reverse that chain of access, then we’ll get to a place where that’s not as harmful as where we’re at right now. It could mean something like suspending the Cannabis Act. The government rushed in, and they created the Cannabis Act.

It was right in this building. In 2006, I was at the Vienna…. They created the Vienna Declaration. At that meeting, the UN said to Canada that it’s up to Canada to decide which drugs are on its schedule for health. It’s only up to them. I brought up cannabis as a harm reduction tool then. Larry Campbell jumped in and said: “Well, I think that’s a great idea, but we’re going to tax the heck out of it.”

Really, we haven’t been able to use cannabis. We haven’t been able to realize the potential for that substance. If you guys were to suspend the Cannabis Act, even for a short time, and let people grow it…. It would be legal still. Just let people grow it, and then create an agency that would be able to collect it.

I’ve been involved in the decriminalization talks with the city. It seems to have fallen down at the thresholds. I was there for those conversations. My argument was that every time you get hungry, you don’t go to the store, right? If you’re at your house, you’re likely to have more than one day’s ration on you. That’s where it falls down. If they upped the thresholds….

I even heard Health Canada say to the police…. The city’s application…. They asked them: “Why don’t you just use your own discretion, like you are now?” It doesn’t really help to just give the police discretionary powers. It would be nicer if we had some actual policies behind it.

In the past three years, I started another group in the Downtown Eastside. It’s Smoke Signals digital outreach hub. We’re all about connecting people. We’ve heard a lot of reference to the disconnection, the isolation, the not being connected into services or into the rest of the Canadian system. Our goal with that organization was to connect people with information on COVID, at the start, and then, as well, provide community safety walks and overdose response. We branched into it because…. We have a peer force. There are people with lived experiences that are actually running the place.

I’m actually not involved with the place anymore after starting it. I’m on a new project. I’m really happy…. Over the past two years, they’ve provided over 19,000 bags of groceries. They’ve responded to countless overdoses. We’ve trained a few people, not as many as I would like. The guys that are with me don’t primarily…. They’re not heavy drug users. Like with WAHRS, with the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society….

The program that I work with now…. I work for Backpack and their community engagement and outreach. They’re trying to start a new organization. It’s the Downtown Eastside trust coalition.

[3:20 p.m.]

In the Downtown Eastside, we’re in danger of losing the SROs to maintenance. We’re in danger of losing them to real estate investments, which puts all the people that are living inside that stop-gap measure for homelessness, the last stop before they are homeless, in jeopardy. We’ve got this coalition of organizations that has come from our COVID project that has agreed to share resources and work together to activate spaces for community, which is my current job right now.

I was thinking about some rapid-fire things, solutions, things that people need. I was thinking benchmarks for in the city. If you’re in the alleys, create a benchmark system where emergency responders could know where you exactly are. Opening up communications in single-room-occupancy hotels and B.C. Housing places where they will be able to use the Lifeguard App or the doctor of the day app from FNHA.

I think communication and that disconnection is really what we’re all…. That’s where we’re suffering, and that’s where the deaths will occur. It sort of almost requires an out-of-the-box solution.

By out of the box, I mean different pools of funding should be allowed to draw into a project. Like for this SRO project that I’m working on, we have a Canadian housing and transformation grant. But to make something like that work, the programming where it’s tenant led and SRO tenant controlled or led or managed, we would need service money to be able to provide the filling in of those gaps.

Creating research projects that would run along safe supply, such as cannabis or poppies — making, coming out with an overall statement that we’d like to return to more natural substances. Since Canada has legalized cannabis, we know that a certain amount of people are going to buy legitimate, legal weed. And then there is still the black market.

We know that both of those sides are suffering, and both of them have a lot of product that isn’t getting to people. Since it has started, there have been all kinds of concentrates and hashes and shatter juices, things that 20 years ago you would never have seen or heard about. To me, that signifies that there’s a lot of medicine that’s just sitting on the shelf. Because of that access and prohibition, it’s created those as well.

If we could free up that access, then maybe we could have a fighting chance. We could take it away from law enforcement. Law enforcement is confiscating all kinds of product. Why don’t we create an agency that will clean the drugs and then give them back to the system to distribute in a safe way, or grow it>

My biggest thing…. Like I said, I think we all suffer from the effects of colonialism. It’s in everything that we do. When we apply for a house, we have to go through credit checks. When we want to buy groceries, sometimes we’re willing to pay money to be able to shop at a place. I’m thinking about Costco or something. A lot of these things are extra systems that are just really designed to keep people out, and they are keeping out the people of the Downtown Eastside.

Since 2016, nearly 10,000 people in B.C. have lost their lives to fentanyl. Where else would it be okay that a whole city just disappeared within four years? I think we really notice, and we’re really feeling the effects of it.

That’s why I was thinking an open granting system. I think housing is our biggest chunk that everybody needs — low-income families, or if you’re a First Nations person, no matter what nation you’re from in B.C. We would have a benefit to opening a granting system for people to actually have a place to live, or a place in Canada.

[3:25 p.m.]

A lot of people with lived experiences are doing all kinds of work in the trenches. They’re coming up with solutions. They’re coming up with safe supply projects. They’re cleaning in the parks. They’re doing outreach, overdose response, teaching naloxone.

One of the things that would be great to create is a reward system for those people with lived experiences. I’m thinking on the lines of Boy Scouts, where if you’re facing life on the streets, you could have this manual that would have all these essays of all the different experiences, all the negative things that you face in life. Then we could award merit badges.

People that are training people in naloxone, people that are doing support groups, people that are networking, people that are walking the streets picking up garbage, providing meals — they’re all really kind of the unsung heroes. They’re really not getting recognition. They’re not getting a job.

There’s not a lot of equity around. I’d be happy to see peers break out of harm reduction or right in the substance use world and get into schools and talk to, maybe, high school students about some of the pitfalls, some of the things that they’re going to face nowadays. When I was young, you could go out there and experiment with drugs and you could live, but nowadays you’re really playing roulette every time.

It’s not just down. I was a stimulant user, and I got down, or heroin. I bought it a few times, and I accidently smoked it once. Nowadays if I had gotten that and it was fentanyl, I would just die because my system wasn’t geared for it. If I slowed down, I would be too slow to function. I was more of a: “Speed me up so I can actually work.”

That’s sort of where I’m at. I don’t know if it’s a great help to all of you. I think just an overall getting back to natural substances. If doctors and nurses aren’t able or willing to prescribe, then we have to look to non-profits or user groups to be able to provide a compassionate response, which means procuring it from somewhere. If they can’t get it from the dark web, then they’ll have to get it from somewhere. I would like it to be Health Canada or some sort of pharmacological body.

The system is already here to get medicine to people, so I don’t understand what the holdup is. I wish we could just have somebody who could safely mix for people.

P. Alexis: Thank you, Chris, for your presentation. Very interesting recommendation. I just want you to…. If possible, could you explain benchmarks in alleyways?

C. Livingstone: Yes. GIS positioning — longitude and latitude. They could take that location that’s in the middle of the alley, and they could put one of those little scanner symbols. You could just scan it, and then the emergency workers will know exactly where you are.

P. Alexis: Understood. Thank you so much for explaining.

S. Chant: I see that you’re from the Vancouver Aboriginal Policing Centre. Can you just say a little bit about that please?

C. Livingstone: The Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre is one of 22 community policing centres across Vancouver. VACPC or the Aboriginal Community Policing Centre provides services to all the Indigenous in Vancouver.

[3:30 p.m.]

Mostly, they deal with police procedures. They’re able to talk about that. If people have complaints, we can point them in the right direction. We also do some…. My boss provides training services to the VPD, as well, trying to help people be culturally aware.

S. Chant: Very good. Thank you.

N. Sharma (Chair): Any other questions, committee members?

I was curious about the…. You mentioned, with the SROs, getting to people and the communication.

You also mentioned the Lifeguard App. We’ve been learning a little bit about that. I just wonder, from your perspective, if it’s something that’s a useful tool for people when they’re using alone and what you think about that.

C. Livingstone: I don’t have a lot of experience with it.

FNHA gave my group Smoke Signals, which is VACPC run, a bunch of phones during the pandemic. They came with dial-a-doctor and the Lifeguard App. I’ve heard of other things, like having some sort of a chip that would monitor people’s….

It depends on how much money you would want to be able to put into it. I don’t know. I think the Lifeguard App would be decent if it was run by a user group. Give them some funding to be able to keep an online user room open.

I haven’t really checked out the Lifeguard App myself. To me, it seems like a great idea.

R. Leonard: Sometimes you just don’t know where to begin. I’ll riff off of Niki’s question.

I understand a little bit about the Lifeguard App. In my community, a user group actually developed their own app. It had to do with trust. The fact that you just suggested it be run by a user group…. I’m curious if you can just speak to the ability to make progress and to prevent overdose deaths through the trust-building exercises.

C. Livingstone: In my wellness support groups, they did play a role. Because I was able to help form WAHRS, that really helped my own health as well.

People trust VANDU or WAHRS. They’ll trust other users. If they were to come into this…. Think of it as a chat room or a Zoom room for people that are using. You would get along with the people that are sort of in the same boat. It could be using…. VANDU already has a supervised injection facility in there. It would just be a matter of connecting it electronically.

I’m not sure if that answers it or not. Or did I answer?

R. Leonard: It’s something to think about. Just more of how it’s not a…. I don’t think we’re looking at a straight and narrow road here to solutions.

C. Livingstone: When the supervised injection site, Insite, started…. We had started it, actually, from a guerilla site at 327 Carroll. We had a volunteer nurse, Megan Olsen, and then there were VANDU and WAHRS, which were kind of managing the chill-out space.

These are people from the street who would come in and hang out. People would use the site, and then they would come in and mix in, in the chill-out room, with the people who are in the community. It did seem really successful. It’s a peer model. They weren’t ready to try it back then either.

That’s what I always argued. It would be great if WAHRS had their own Indigenous supervised injection site.

N. Sharma (Chair): I want to thank you, Chris, very much for your presentation, for coming here to give us your perspective. It’s been really interesting to hear everything you have to offer. Thanks for all the work that you do as well.

That’s the end of this committee’s business as well. Could we have a motion to adjourn.

Sonia and Trevor.

The committee adjourned at 3:35 p.m.