Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs
Issue 21 - Evidence
WINDSOR, Friday, June 7, 2002
The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs met this day at 8:00 a.m. to reassess Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies.
Senator Pierre Claude Nolin (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we will hear this morning first from RCMP Staff Sergeant Wally Dowhayko. The floor is yours, sir.
Staff Sergeant Wally Dowhayko, Officer in Charge of the RCMP Windsor Drug Section: I would like to thank committee members, on behalf of the Commanding Officer, RCMP ``O'' Division, for inviting our participation.
I have approximately 32 years of policing experience and have been involved in operational drug enforcement for approximately 20 years. My duties have been varied and range from gram level marijuana seizures while working the street team in Windsor, Ontario, during the mid 1980s to international heroin smuggling in the golden triangle while attached to the heroin unit in Toronto. Drug investigations have allowed me to travel throughout Thailand, Germany, Cyprus, Hong Kong and the U.S.A.
Currently, I am in charge of the Windsor Drug Section, a unit comprised of 13 investigators whose mandate is high- level criminal organizations and individuals involved in the importation and large-scale trafficking of drugs; proceeds of crime; and drug prevention. Of the 13 investigators, 1 is assigned to full-time drug awareness duties.
I would like to begin by providing the committee with a brief snapshot of the local drug scene as ``sourced'' through intelligence and seizures from local police agencies, notably the Windsor Police Service, the OPP and the RCMP drug units. Hereafter I will deal specifically with cannabis issues.
The sources of most Windsor-based seizures are Toronto, Montreal and Detroit. Most drugs are readily available. Cannabis is abundant and continues to be the most popular illicit drug. The increased demand for a better grade of cannabis has spawned a marked increase in the number of indoor grow operations. Crack cocaine emanating from Toronto and Detroit is available more in the downtown core area. Cocaine powder is supplied by mid-level dealers who obtain multi-ounce quantities from either Detroit or Toronto, as and when required. Chemicals, most notably, MDMA, which is commonly referred to as Ecstasy, are becoming increasingly popular. Also, with the increase in methamphetamine manufacturing in Michigan, Ohio and California, the importation of Canadian precursors, especially ephedrine, is also on the rise and is a growing concern for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
More specifically with respect to cannabis, I can say without hesitation that it remains the most popular, widely used drug in all user age groups. As noted previously, all local enforcement agencies have seen a marked increased in the number of indoor grow operations, as growers switch from the traditional outdoor to the more sophisticated and difficult to detect indoor hydroponic operations. In the last two years, the RCMP drug unit has seized and dismantled approximately 10 grow operations, with plant seizures ranging from 50 to 600. These figures are significantly higher for my counterparts at the OPP and the Windsor Police Service. In our seizures, the qualitative THC content has ranged from 5.2 to 8.2 per cent. This range of THC appears consistent with samples analyzed across the province.
As this extremely lucrative industry continues to expand, it has attracted and will continue to attract criminal organizations, or ordinary citizens eager to cash in. Indoor cannabis operations are used primarily to supply local regional markets. However, since demand continues to outpace local supply, traffickers are forced to find new sources of supply. British Columbia continues to be a supplier to the area. The drug unit has conducted three controlled deliveries of B.C. grown marijuana in the past eighteen months, with seizures ranging from one pound to five pounds. Until recently, Mennonites operating between Mexico and Leamington, which is a small community approximately 50 kilometres from Windsor, were responsible for supplying significant quantities of cannabis. A combined forces operation dismantled this group and seized in excess of 100 pounds of marijuana, which was one of a series of shipments. Furthermore, with a large Mexican population in Detroit, there is little doubt that other suppliers are involved in cross-border trafficking to Canadian-based traffickers. Although in my view the border does deter many small independent traffickers, the large groups continue to import and export large quantities of drugs through the border, as was demonstrated with the seizure last year of approximately 500 kilos of cannabis secreted in a commercial shipment of beans. Approximately 80,000 such trucks cross the border every month. This provides ready access to both Canadian and American markets. Given the sheer volume of traffic, trying to identify drug shipments without specific intelligence via secondary inspection is at best a shot in the dark. Although drug interdiction at the border rests with Canada Customs, the RCMP drug unit does provide 24/7 on-call coverage to the border, which includes processing of drugs seized, laying of criminal charges and any other post-offence investigation.
An agreement had been reached with Customs wherein certain thresholds have been set prior to the drug unit being notified. For cannabis, this is set at 50 grams. During the preceding 18 months, members of the drug unit have been involved in 9 Customs generated cannabis calls, wherein importing/possession charges were laid. Seizures ranged from 1,000 grams to 50 grams. The majority of offenders are U.S.A. citizens. Seizures effected by Customs that do not meet this threshold are processed via a civil penalty. These small seizures, which may number between 30 and 50 per month, are retrieved and processed without criminal charge via bulk destruction. In total, the drug unit expends approximately five per cent of dedicated resources to cannabis investigations, which have included controlled deliveries; outdoor marijuana eradication; indoor grow operations; and assistance to foreign agencies. No charges were laid during the preceding 18 months for simple possession of cannabis. Three persons were charged locally with marijuana trafficking.
Cannabis is not considered a priority, and as such, limited resources are directed to its enforcement. However, I would not hesitate to undertake a major operation directed at an organized crime group that is or becomes involved in cannabis production or trafficking. In closing, I was also asked to comment on cannabis seizures post 9/11. I believe that my counterparts in Customs would be in a better position to comment statistically. It is my understanding that although the number of seizures increased, the quantities seized decreased. There were more personal use seizures. Overall, RCMP attendance at the border to initiate criminal proceedings has remained constant for the most part. As I was asked to comment only on the specific cannabis-related issues, I will not digress into other areas such as demand reduction or drug awareness. It is my understanding that this committee has received numerous presentations dealing with these important issues. I would now be happy to try to answer any questions that this committee may have.
Senator Kenny: You have raised a range of issues that are of interest to me. When you said you provide 24/7 coverage at the border, is that both for the tunnel and the bridge?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: That is correct.
Senator Kenny: That is performed by your 13 personnel?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes.
Senator Kenny: Do you physically have somebody there?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: No. It is on an on-call basis.
Senator Kenny: That means somebody is getting out of bed at three in the morning sometimes to get over of there?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Occasionally, yes. The number of calls has been dramatically reduced since we established the threshold mark. When I first came to Windsor, we attended for any amount of more than three or four grams. The number of calls and the costs incurred, in terms of both the financial and material resources, were putting an excessive strain on the unit. At that point, we met with Customs and we raised the threshold. We have met twice now and we have increased it. We set the level at 15 grams, and then we went to 30 grams, and now we are up to 50 grams before we will attend. It has significantly cut back on the number of call-outs.
Senator Kenny: The Windsor police department would be attending on a variety of other things, and there would police around at both the major crossings, but not dealing with drugs?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: That is correct. The Windsor police will attend to any criminal matters. The RCMP will do the drug matters.
Senator Kenny: You would help me considerably if you could elaborate a bit more on a comment you made. It had to do with interdiction. Could you go back to that section? I think you were making reference to the fact that, if I heard you correctly, you were not relying on intelligence; you were actually relying on inspections to assist you in apprehending drug traffickers at the border.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I was saying that given the sheer volume of traffic, trying to identify drug shipments solely through a secondary inspection was a shot in the dark. With 80,000 trucks coming through, trying to pick a truck that may contain drugs is an impossible feat. It is sheer luck.
Senator Kenny: Just to clarify things for the benefit of the committee, my understanding is that somewhere between one and three per cent of the vehicles crossing are back-ended or de-stuffed, and that they are selected on the basis of intelligence. I am trying to square the circle here. If the Customs people are telling us that they make their selections for secondary inspection on the basis of intelligence, how good is it?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Given the number of seizures here in Windsor, I would have to question how good it is. My understanding is that there are certain indicators that they use to determine whether a truck is ``secondaried'' or not. When I referred to ``intelligence,'' I was looking at it more as intelligence from foreign agencies, whether in the United States or elsewhere, identifying certain vehicles that may contain shipments, so that lookouts could be posted at the border crossings across the country and interdiction could be enforced that way.
Senator Kenny: Another committee with which I am dealing expressed a great deal of concern about the low level of inspection. If you are only looking at 3 out of 100 vehicles, and you are just opening the back door of half of them to see if it roughly looks like it should, and if only 1 in 100 is actually being taken apart and looked at thoroughly, we had a certain comfort that three per cent was not low because of the quality of the intelligence provided. The three per cent were very well selected. I am detecting something in your comments here that suggests that perhaps it is a bit more hit and miss.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Again, I am not at the border. I do not work with Canada Customs. I am just relying on the information that I receive, and I think Canada Customs would probably be in a better position to comment on exactly how they target vehicles for secondary inspection. I believe somebody from Canada Customs will be speaking later today. My understanding is that they have certain criteria that they use to select which vehicles will be checked. If there is additional intelligence that they are relying on, they could probably better comment on that than I could.
Senator Kenny: Twenty years experience in this field is a long time. You have 13 PYs.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes.
Senator Kenny: How do you feel about your resource levels?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Well, I have 13 on paper. In reality, I have seven or eight right now. Ever since 9/11, people have been seconded from their unit to other units dealing with terrorist and border issues. The force is trying to deal with that. It makes it difficult, but I am working closely with the other agencies in trying to integrate our enforcement duties, and it is helping.
Senator Kenny: Could you give the committee some sense of how large the group is overall, not only dealing with the police side and arrests, but also with the education and treatment side? How many people are you aware of in the Windsor area dealing with people who have business with drugs?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I do not quite understand your question.
Senator Kenny: You have told us how many members of the RCMP are involved in drug work here in the Windsor area, which, incidentally, runs from where, Point Pelee up to Sarnia?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: We do most of Essex County. We go up to Chatham and part way up to Sarnia.
Senator Kenny: It is a big area?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I think it is approximately 500,000 people.
Senator Kenny: And 150 kilometres of border?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes.
Senator Kenny: We are looking at the federal component. Is there a similar number from the OPP or the Windsor police department? That is the first part of the question. How many police are actively looking at this?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I believe the OPP unit is almost identical to ours. Their drug unit is organized somewhat differently, but I believe in terms of resources, it is close to 13. However, their area is much larger and they operate somewhat differently.
Senator Kenny: They run from London to Sarnia to Leamington?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: That is correct, and I believe the Windsor Police Service, which basically polices the City of Windsor, and occasionally outside the city limits, has approximately 10 people in their unit. I believe Staff Sergeant Woods will be in later this morning.
Senator Kenny: Okay, so we are looking at 36 if everybody is staffed up roughly in this area on the police side?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I would say that is quite accurate.
Senator Kenny: Setting that aside, how many are involved in education and in persuading people not to get involved in drug use? Not just confined to police, but in other areas. Does the Medical Officer of Health have people doing this? Are there groups in schools doing this? Are there private groups?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: We have one full-time person, and the Windsor police community-policing unit visits most of the schools. I believe there are three or four people attached to that unit. Most of the OPP detachments have community-based officers who will attend the schools and do the VIP programs and some of the other drug talks. Outside of the policing community I am not aware of anyone who actually goes out to the schools or provides educational material to the school-aged kids.
Senator Kenny: What would your estimate be of the treatment and public health end? I recognize you are not an expert in this, sir, but if you have hung around here for 20 years, you must have some sense of who is out there.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I have not been in Windsor for 20 years and I cannot really answer that question accurately.
Senator Kenny: Fair enough. I am hearing from you that the policy of the RCMP is not to arrest for simple possession unless you trip over it?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: That is correct.
Senator Kenny: Is that supported by the local Crown?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: To a great extent, it is. Again, I have not really discussed the issue with him. We do not normally get involved in simple possession cases unless we are investigating something else and happen to run into it. I do not think the Crown, and I know him quite well, I have dealt with him for years, would have a problem with that.
Senator Kenny: When you say that you do not deal with simple possession, how do you address groups like the one we heard last night, such as the Compassion Club, that clearly must be stockpiling volumes of marijuana?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: How do we deal with groups like that?
Senator Kenny: Yes.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: If they are stockpiling it in quantities that are consistent with possession for the purpose of trafficking, if information came to us that they were in possession of those types of quantities, we would probably initiate an investigation.
Senator Kenny: There is no accord that as long as they stay within certain bounds, you are not going to mess with them?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Absolutely not.
The Chairman: Are you familiar with the regulation on medical use of marijuana?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: To a certain extent, I am. I am not an expert in that field, but I am aware of some of the regulations.
The Chairman: Do you know how many people in your jurisdiction do have such an exemption and what is the process for informing you of that?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: To tell you the truth, senator, there is no process in place for notifying local police agencies of how many persons in that area have an exemption. I would only be in a position to comment on how many persons residing in Windsor and Essex have a medical exemption from what I read in the local paper and from facts disseminated by other groups.
The Chairman: You talked in your remarks about the level of THC. I presume, and correct me if I am wrong, that those analyses are coming from cases that are going to court because the accused is pleading not guilty?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: That is correct. It is quite unusual to request a quantitative analysis. It is not really part of the case. In some cases, when we are dealing with some very high-tech hydroponic grow operations and can see that the quality of the cannabis is superior, we may, just to see what type of marijuana we do have in the area, send it in for analysis.
The Chairman: With 8.2 being the maximum level that you have seen?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: That is the maximum that we have seen here. As I said, I think that is quite consistent with other samples that are being submitted, not just in this area, but also across the province.
The Chairman: My last question deals not with cannabis, but with ephedrine. You mentioned that the DEA is concerned about ephedrine as precursor for methamphetamine. Correct me if I am wrong, but Health Canada will, or has already, properly regulated ephedrine. Are you aware of that?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I am aware that Health Canada was looking at it, but my understanding was that they were expecting some regulations later this year. They are not in place yet.
The Chairman: It is not at all the purpose of our committee right now, but in talking with colleagues in the U.S. I learned that are very concerned with the ephedrine from Canada.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes, and Health Canada is looking at it. As I said, I think they are expecting to put some regulations in place before the year is out.
The Chairman: That means that you have a close relationship with your American colleagues in trying to frame an effective regulation?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes.
The Chairman: You are at least talking with your colleagues in Health Canada to achieve that?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes, we have been in touch with Health Canada. As I said, the Americans are very concerned about it and have made their concerns known through political channels, which is what has prompted Health Canada to look seriously at the ephedrine problem. It is a major problem in the central United States.
The Chairman: Could you expand on the type of grow-ops — the size, how many people are involved in those criminal organizations and what technique they use?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: There are two different types of indoor grow operations, those that use soil in pots, and those that use soil-less cultivation. We find that most people here are still using the pots of soil, and that may explain why the THC content is not up into the double figures, as it is with some groups. Here in Windsor we have an Asian community, Vietnamese in particular, that is very active in hydroponic operations. Staff Sergeant Woods is quite involved in that group. A number of grows have been taken down in the last few months. Most of them are in rented houses. No one lives in the homes, which are modified. People with whom these groups are in contact supply the electricity. They commence their operations and will grow anywhere from 50 to, I would say, 500 plants. These are very high tech operations, producing some excellent quality marijuana, and very profitable.
The Chairman: You are focusing on those grow-ops?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Again, not me per se. I will work with my policing partners and I will provide resources, as and when required. Given our limited resources, we try to concentrate on some of the other groups that are involved in cocaine and chemical trafficking.
Senator Kenny: If you had a pie chart that demonstrated the allocation of your efforts in a global sense, how big a slice of the pie would go towards dealing with marijuana and how big a slice deals with other drugs?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Are you talking about the Province of Ontario?
Senator Kenny: Well, if you have those figures, fine, but more specifically for the 14 PYs and the resources you have.
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: I have gone back and looked at the hours that are committed. Approximately five per cent of the resources will be spent during the course of the year on marijuana, whether it is outdoor eradication, indoor eradication, or border calls.
Senator Kenny: Would it be fair to say that that is a cursory activity that you only undertake when it comes to your attention in relation to your other activities related to drugs?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Partially. As I have tried to clarify, if today I received information that an outlaw biker group was becoming involved in grow operations, I would have no problem at all in focusing my resources on that particular group.
Senator Kenny: If it is shoved in your face, you have to do something about it, but if it is not, then you would not normally plan to do that?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: We are changing from a commodity-based enforcement unit to one that targets criminal groups. If we are investigating a criminal group, say a biker club, and we realize through our investigation that they are involved in marijuana trafficking, importation or growing, we would focus our resources on that group, regardless of the problem.
Senator Kenny: If they happen to be full service then you are going to pick up the marijuana; if they happen to be specialists you are not?
Staff Sgt. Dowhayko: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Our next witness, honourable senators, is Gwendolyn Landolt.
Ms Gwendolyn Landolt, National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada: I am very grateful to have this time to speak to the issue. I must say that one of the difficulties we are having with the interim report of this committee is that you are saying that 30 per cent of our young people are using marijuana, even with the legislation in place.
I think the previous speaker will explain that that is simply because the legislation is not being enforced, especially for simple possession. As I pointed out last night, Statistics Canada 2000 has given us statistics that show that 68 people a day are charged with this in all of Canada. We have absolutely no record, according to the Auditor General, of how many people are actually convicted. I think that you have probably sensed, as I did, that one of our problems is that the grow-ops in British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario are shipping 60 per cent of their product across the border, according to the International Narcotics Control Board. It is extremely difficult for the National Drug Association in the United States to cope because we are not controlling the grow-ops; we are not controlling what is going on. It is very high grade, between 20 to 30 per cent THC, whereas that from Afghanistan or Jamaica is only 6 per cent. We know, for example, from previous testimony you have heard what has happened in York region, north of Toronto. We have the Vietnamese groups. There have been murders. There have been illegal grow-ops, which are extremely lucrative, because according to the International Narcotics Control Board, Canada is only giving them a slap on the wrist. When they are arrested they are given a $2,000 fine, or simply a suspended sentence.
We have difficulty with the idea that if we decriminalize it, everything will be wonderful. It is absolutely naive to assume that. Once it is decriminalized, the criminal element will get into this even more, because there will not be the fear of even the current minor police enforcement. To say that to decriminalize it is the sensible thing is not very logical. We have people who pollute in spite of laws saying, ``No pollution.'' We have people who rape, even though we say, ``No, it is wrong. You cannot do that.'' We have people who are racist. We say, ``No, it is wrong.'' Just because some may violate the law does not mean that we should do away with the law. We never take that position in any other social policy, and it is of deep concern to us.
You are shrugging off the responsibility by saying, ``Oh well, we will just decriminalize it and the grow-ops will disappear; young people will not have charges against them.'' They do not get charged for possession. You know that now. You have heard testimony from many others similar to that of the police officer who spoke just before me. It does not solve anything. It only exacerbates a very basic problem.
I must say also that we cannot ignore the fact that Canada has ratified the UN treaties, of which the most recent was in 2000. We agreed in the Palermo declaration to maintain criminal sanctions against all illicit drugs, and as you know, cannabis is one of the prohibited drugs under the international treaties. How can Canada go against what it has committed to internationally and create intense problems for other countries, particularly our neighbour, the United States? I understand from personal contacts that the Americans wanted to put Canada on the blacklist, with Afghanistan, because of its lack of enforcement of the marijuana laws. It was only through intense diplomatic efforts in Ottawa that they managed to avoid that.
How much more difficult will the problem become if we decriminalize it? We only need to look to other countries. We must look to the Netherlands, where they decriminalized it, and the drug use increased, not only for marijuana, which increased 250 percent, but also for other drugs, like cocaine and heroin. We reported some of those studies and references in our brief.
The same thing happened in Switzerland. They have had enormous trouble. You are not going to just decriminalize marijuana; you are going to open the door to other problems.
I know that in your interim report you also mentioned that it is not a gateway drug. Well, we do know one thing. We know that all those who are on hard drugs, such as cocaine, smoked marijuana. Of course not everyone who smokes marijuana will get into hard drugs, but we do know that everybody on hard drugs smoked marijuana in the past.
We are not looking at the intrinsic harm done by the drugs. We have documented again and again the intrinsic harm of marijuana. I would suggest that anybody who says there is no harm to smoking marijuana has not taken the time to look at the literature on the issue. It is just coming in pell-mell. In fact, there are over 10,000 studies showing the difficulties and problems with long-term use of marijuana. I think it would be negligent not to look at those complications.
Our position is the same as Canada's drug strategy enunciated in 1992, that is, prevention, enforcement and rehabilitation. It is of deep concern to us that there is no education going on in our schools against drug use, and that is really an anomaly when you compare it with the anti-smoking campaign. The studies indicate that marijuana is much worse, because it stays in the body longer, it is kept in the lungs longer, and it causes all sorts of complications. On one hand, we are saying, ``Oh no, we cannot have cigarette smoking,'' but on the other hand, we are hearing, ``Okay, we will decriminalize marijuana.'' There is no logic in that sort of position.
I know your mandate — I read it — was harm reduction. If you mean, ``harm reduction,'' in the general sense of preventing the casualties, that is one thing, but it is becoming a global creative renaming of decriminalization of drugs. We know that there are three powerful agencies in the United States funding the decriminalization agenda. I know that some of the groups they are funding in Canada have appeared before you. I do not want to name them, but I think you know that George Soros, the New York billionaire, and his Lindesmith Center is funding much of the decriminalization movement in Canada. There are the two agencies. However, as U.S. Congressman J. Dennis Hastert, Chairman of the U.S. Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice stated:
... Proponents of drug legalization are, at best, a dangerous and misguided crowd. For many, it is an elaborate game, a way to retaliate against those who condemn drug-using behaviour. For others, legalization is a means of achieving other ends — undermining moral values and democratic institutions, turning profits by expanding the user population, or creating new industries around the maintenance of addiction.
Whatever the motivation, drug legalization is wrong-headed and destined to hurt those societies which indulge the instinct to experiment with the most vulnerable segments of their population, including their children.
Certainly we would stand by that. We would be totally supportive of his experience of the situation in the United States. We have to say that allowing the use of marijuana for medical reasons is not backed up by the studies. It is a way to reach the decriminalization stage. We know that the Canadian Medical Association objects to it. We know they are fundamentally opposed to this, saying, ``If you really want THC, take the prescribed drug,'' which is Drananol or Maninol. ``Take the drug, but don't smoke it.'' There is no other so-called ``drug'' in history that has been smoked. Never. This is just a way to open the door to decriminalization of marijuana.
Senator Kenny: Why do laws work in this country? Do they work because we write them, pass them and enforce them, or because the majority of Canadians believe in and support them?
Ms Landolt: I cannot say, because the law is a guideline for the conscience and the majority of people are law abiding. You heard the people last night who say, ``I want my right to smoke marijuana,'' but other people want the right to break other laws. That is the way it is. There is prostitution, even though there are laws against it. There is an element that will want to break it.
Senator Kenny: However, prostitution is not illegal.
Ms Landolt: Well, communicating it is.
Senator Kenny: Soliciting is illegal.
Ms Landolt: Yes.
Senator Kenny: At what point does your organization start to worry when you see significant numbers against it? If you have one or two per cent, I do not think it is a worry, but when you have 15 or 20 per cent of the population saying they do not agree with the law, to the point that they are prepared to risk arrest, does that not cause you to question the law?
Ms Landolt: Not at all. It means the law is not being enforced and people —
Senator Kenny: Well, no. I have heard you say that six times now, ma'am.
Ms Landolt: That is what that tells me. It does not tell me to question the law. It tells me two things. One, there has been no education. It tells me there has not been enforcement and there has not been treatment. That would cause —
Senator Kenny: What would cause you to question a law then?
Ms Landolt: Not at all.
Senator Kenny: No, no. I said, what would cause you to question a law? What indicator of public acceptance would cause you to say, ``Hmm, maybe we should go back and look at that one, because there are a large number of people who do not agree with us on it''? Would it take 50 per cent? Would it take 100 per cent? What level would cause you to feel uncomfortable about whether the law is working correctly?
Ms Landolt: I would not look at how many people are breaking the law. I would ask, ``Why is it being broken?'' You have assumed it is because people do not like it, but it may well be because people know they can get away with it. I think you are putting the wrong question. You are saying, ``Oh well, people do not like the law, so they are breaking it.'' The idea is, why not? There are no sanctions.
Senator Kenny: Why not answer the question? I have been very patient with you, ma'am, but I am losing my patience. The question is a simple one. What percentage of people breaking the law would cause you to start questioning whether the law is appropriate? Pick a number.
Ms Landolt: I would not pick a number for the very reason I gave.
Senator Kenny: That is not good enough.
How quickly will respect for all laws deteriorate if we have some on the books that are not respected and enforced? Are you concerned at all that we have some laws out there that the Crowns and the police are not enforcing? What will be the impact of that on the other laws?
Ms Landolt: I can see where you are coming from, and I hesitate to suggest it, but I think it is coming with a bias and that you are not looking at this analytically.
Senator Kenny: Absolutely it is coming with a bias, the bias that comes from having been 36 years in government and understanding that if the public does not support something, it is not going to work. Therefore, coming with that bias, ma'am, work with me and answer my question, please.
Ms Landolt: I am working with you in questioning why it is not working. Why do you not listen to what I am saying?
Senator Kenny: I am sorry, ma'am, but I have listened to you. I am having difficulty listening to you say the same thing over and over again. I have been listening very carefully and I do not agree with you.
Ms Landolt: Well I do not agree with you. You are simply saying —
Senator Kenny: No, no. Do not tell me what I am saying, ma'am.
Ms Landolt: — that all laws, all laws are broken. Prostitution, which you call soliciting, it —
Senator Kenny: I did not call it soliciting.
Ms Landolt: We still have those laws. Why are you choosing marijuana? Uh oh, they are not obeying the law. Thirty thousand are breaking the law. Oh, dear me. We must decriminalize it.
Senator Kenny: Thank you, ma'am.
Ms Landolt: Why are you arbitrarily choosing certain laws?
The Chairman: If you look at our discussion paper, on the last page, we list a series of questions that we are asking Canadians. Question number five reads as follows: ``Should public policies aim to prevent use or minimize the negative consequences of use?''
Ms Landolt: Again, with respect, you are not limiting the consequences when you decriminalize it. The whole point is you will add more, because the law is a deterrent. You will not limit the consequences. You are calling this ``harm reduction,'' but it is not possible to limit the consequences when you decriminalize it. More and more people will get involved and will become addicts. Not everybody becomes an addict. You are putting forward questions that do not really deal with the issues.
The Chairman: As you know, the Supreme Court will have to decide on the recreational use of marijuana in the near future. Imagine for a moment that the Supreme Court decides that because of section 7, and even section 1, of the Charter, that the law is unconstitutional, as they did with abortion in 1988. What are we going to do, even though we have signed and ratified those international treaties?
Ms Landolt: Number one, you are being hypothetical. We do not know what the court will do, so we do not deal with that right now. The second thing is, if the court should do that — and I am no lover of the court — we know it will be a political decision, not a legal or moral one. It is unfortunate that the wording of the Charter is so vague. I think there will be a lack of respect for our court. We have seen it with a couple of decisions that have come down. The general public seems to feel the court is involved in politics. It is a second level of legislature. If they do that, I would have to say that will be the response.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Senators, our next witness is Darlene Simpson.
Ms Darlene Simpson, Director of Programs, House of Sophrosyne: Thank you very much for inviting me here today. It is a wonderful opportunity, and I can assure you it has stimulated lots of discussion in my agency and my community. I am also the chair of the Providers of Addiction Treatment for Windsor-Essex. I would like to first tell you a little about myself.
House of Sophrosyne is a treatment centre for chemically dependent women. It is a short-term residential treatment centre that has been in operation for 22 years. I have worked there as both a counsellor and, since 1998, as the director of programs. We do not have executive directors at House of Sophrosyne. I am part of an executive management team.
I represent, of course, people who have a serious addiction. I am not representing outpatient counselling or people in preventive education. I am simply representing the percentage of the population whose lives have come to a halt through serious addiction. I want to take a minute to look at what I call the ``reality'' of residential treatment in Ontario. I mean by that, what kinds of drugs are available and what percentages of people are entering treatment in Ontario for what types of drug dependence. I have two stats on that. I do have the House of Sophrosyne results from outcome evaluations, and on page A9 of that report it lists the drugs of choice of our clients. I also have a sheet entitled, ``Presenting Problem Substances — Residential Clients,'' which uses bar graphs to create a status report. That shows our agency in white and the provincial statistics in the black bar.
As you can see, the most problematic drug in residential treatment is still alcohol, which is a legal drug. Currently, the second most used drug is cocaine, and after that it is cannabis. You can see that cannabis and cocaine are running neck and neck. From year to year, sometimes cannabis is the second drug of choice and sometimes it is cocaine. With these statistics, we are looking at people's primary drug of choice. That is the question that we ask in the House of Sophrosyne. It does not mean that they do not use other drugs — 49 per cent of people use multiple drugs.
Senator Kenny: This is people at your place?
Ms Simpson: Sixty per cent of our clients are from the entire province of Ontario.
Senator Kenny: You say this is the only regional centre in Ontario?
Ms Simpson: No. We are considered a regional treatment centre, which means that we take clients from throughout the province.
Senator Kenny: It is not geographic. It is not Sarnia, to London, to —
Ms Simpson: Exactly, yes.
Senator Kenny: It is Sarnia to London, too?
Ms Simpson: No. I am sorry. We take clients from the entire province of Ontario, so 50 to 60 per cent of them in any given year are from out of town. They could be from anywhere in Ontario — Northern Ontario, Toronto or Ottawa. That is because it is a specialized, women-specific treatment centre. People are coming into treatment with a serious problem of dependence on marijuana.
I would just like to bring your attention to page D9 of this report on outcomes measures. I found it interesting that when our clients left, they were more likely, if they relapsed, to use marijuana. They are more likely to use marijuana in the first three months and six months of leaving treatment than they were prior to entering. Then a year after leaving treatment and two years after, it starts to look comparable to the use numbers when they entered the program.
My position is that marijuana is harmful. The fact that the report uses the word ``benign'' is a little troublesome to us, because we do find that marijuana is a harmful drug. Without being too tedious or boring, I want to go through some facts on marijuana. My source for these facts is a Dr. David Ohlms. Marijuana use among teens is increasing, which your report also said, and a third of high school students have tried it; a fifth of high school students use it regularly.
Marijuana is a dangerous drug that can cause significant problems. I think we often do not think of it as dangerous because it does not have a rapid dependency rate like, for example, heroin or crack, or even nicotine. You can take it or leave it over long periods of time without developing a dependence. We are not going to see people arriving in the emergency room after overdosing on marijuana. People are not going to get HIV from using marijuana, that kind of thing.
There are still some short-term concerns about marijuana because of its physiological effects. Marijuana does affect health because there is 3 to 10 times the amount of tar in a marijuana joint than in a cigarette, so of course it will affect the health of our lungs. It can lead to emphysema, bronchitis and cancer.
Of course, THC does not dissolve readily in the body. It is stored in the fatty cells. It is different from alcohol, which can leave the body within thirty minutes for an average drink. Your body can eliminate alcohol within an hour, whereas marijuana has a half-life of about 48 to 72 hours. That leads to all kinds of problems, because you can smoke up the night before and it can still affect your functioning or your performance the next day. According to this study, just two or three joints a week for two to three months can cause a significant amount of THC to be stored in the brain. The American Medical Association, and I am sorry I do not know what the Canadian Medical Association would say, says more than one joint more than three times a week would be defined as heavy usage, and that is because of the long half-life of THC.
The Chairman: When you talk about regular use among students, are you applying the same formula, three joints a week? That is your definition of regular users?
Ms Simpson: The people we are seeing in treatment are usually using a lot more than that, but the point is that if you are using three joints a week or more, you are using more than your body can eliminate.
The Chairman: When you say one-fifth of high school students are regular users, they fit that description?
Ms Simpson: Yes. That or more. Without being too tedious, it affects the complex fine motor movements, not just the simple motor movements like pressing a button or using a hammer.
I think where it affects students the most is that it causes an immediate and profound impairment in the short-term memory, which makes it hard to learn. If you cannot retain something in your short-term memory, of course you cannot retain it in your long-term memory. What we see in chronic users, and I have three sample case histories, is amotivational syndrome. I just took a random sample of clients who gave marijuana as their drug of choice, and it is interesting to note that they were all diagnosed by their family doctors as clinically depressed. In that sense, it is hard to work with people whose drug of choice is marijuana and who are dependent, because the amotivational syndrome makes it difficult for them to engage with life.
There was a study, which I tried to get for you but I could not find — if you want me to, I will look harder — of professional airline pilots who used flight simulators after smoking one joint, and they started testing themselves 20 minutes after smoking the joint and up to 24 hours. They were not able to land the plane within the lines even up to 24 hours later, which sort of sums it up. These were pilots in training. The perception was that they had all performed better. That is the interesting thing about marijuana; it gives your brain the perception that you are performing very well.
Therefore we do recommend, and I am not going to go repeat this, that marijuana should remain an illegal and highly controlled substance, with very limited and highly regulated medical uses. If we do choose in the future to decriminalize simple possession, it must be accompanied by education on the risks of marijuana so as not to encourage the use of it. The perception that marijuana is harmless comes out of the 1960s, when it contained one to five per cent THC, whereas now the drug has an average of 10 per cent THC. Taking one aspirin or one Tylenol is a lot different from taking ten. Sometimes, marijuana contains up to 17 or 18 per cent THC, which increases the risks. I also think that some of our research into marijuana's connection to depression, drop-out rates and accidents is premature. The length of time that it stays in the body makes it very difficult to associate it with accidents and things like that.
I have three case studies here of very recent clients. The first one is Julie G. She is 16 years of age and started using marijuana, which she describes as her drug of choice, when she was 14. She combined it occasionally with limited alcohol use, and within the last three months has begun to combine it with Ecstasy, Speed, Tylenol and Serax. She had a recent episode with GHB that landed her in a coma in the hospital, which is not necessarily related to her marijuana use. Marijuana is her drug of choice, and again, it is interesting that her family doctor diagnosed her as having depression at 14 years of age and prescribed Wellbutrin. She was diagnosed with depression six to eight months after some heavy marijuana use. There were no users in her family. She was awaiting a theft charge. The cost of marijuana is fairly high.
My second client reported the cost as about $80 a day for her, and about $560 a week for eight joints. This first client continued to experience severe depression and actually got to the point where she attempted suicide. I am not saying that there were no other complex issues in this person's life, but she had been diagnosed with depression by the time she came into treatment. She was unable to do well in school.
The second client is an example of generational use; her own mother introduced her to marijuana before the age of 10. We are talking about chronic marijuana users. She was unable to even function in public school, and was diagnosed with depression and severe learning disabilities, including an inability to concentrate, poor memory and confusion.
She is currently coughing up blood and has severe mood swings. She has recently started on the harder drugs, including Percocet, mescaline, crystal meth and cocaine. Even though it is not thought of as a gateway drug, and I know there is no proof of that, in some of the cases we see, long-term marijuana use brings them in contact with people who use harder drugs, and they end up doing the same.
The final case is a person who is older and has used absolutely nothing but marijuana, but has used between 6 and 10 joints per day for 16 years. Again, she was diagnosed with depression, memory problems and mood swings. She is infertile, and there is some question of whether marijuana affects the reproductive organs. She is unable to work, and of course her husband uses too, so there are problems in their marriage. By the time we get somebody whose drug of choice is marijuana into residential treatment, they are unable to function in school or at work. They are unable to engage in healthy relationships, and they are often diagnosed with depression. They are definitely unable to concentrate and complete tasks.
Senator Kenny: Could you tell us how you chose the name of the group?
Ms Simpson: ``Sophrosyne'' is a Greek word meaning a wise and balanced life, and that is our goal.
Senator Kenny: How many people are involved, and what are your professional qualifications?
Ms Simpson: I am a social worker with an addictions certificate from the University of Toronto. How many people are involved in our agency? We take about 250 clients a year.
Senator Kenny: And staff?
Ms Simpson: Twenty-three staff, but they are not all full-time.
Senator Kenny: Funding?
Ms Simpson: The Ministry of Health and United Way for our local programs.
Senator Kenny: You talked about the relapse rate, and I think you said by six months, you are back at square one?
Ms Simpson: Yes. Within a year.
Senator Kenny: It made me think of the pamphlets or small booklets you see in schools teaching kids how to study, where they are told, if you review all of your classes that night, you will carry that knowledge for a week. If you review it once a week, you will carry it for a month. If you review once a month, you will not have to study for exams because you will have it for good. Are you telling us the same sort of thing, that if your clients had treatment on a more frequent basis, but with expanded times between treatments, they would have a lower relapse rate?
Ms Simpson: I am not quite sure I understand what you are asking.
Senator Kenny: If you were looking at it from that perspective of the learning principle, if you were trying to explain to a young person how one learns, a big part of it is regular review of what they have studied. It is based on studies that show that kids forget 50 per cent of what went on in class by the end of the day. If they review it that night, they are back up at 100 per cent and they will retain that for about seven days, on average. After seven days, they will have forgotten 50 percent of what they learned. If it is reviewed again at the end of seven days, they will probably retain it for a month. I am just wondering if the same principle would apply to the people that you are dealing with in the context of marijuana.
Ms Simpson: Ongoing education is definitely important in preventing relapse. One of the most significant things in preventing relapse is that people continue with after care and access to support. They might not go back to crack or heroin, but they might go back to marijuana first when they relapse.
Senator Kenny: The part of your testimony that I found most interesting was your comment about airplane pilots and that people think they are doing well, even though that perception is not born out by performance measurement.
Ms Simpson: That is right.
Senator Kenny: Would you accordingly discount much of the testimony that one receives from people who are using the drug?
Ms Simpson: I would be looking at it through a different lens than they probably would.
Senator Kenny: Tell me about your lens, please.
Ms Simpson: I will use the example of parenting. Most of the women who come to the House of Sophrosyne are parents. We get people between the ages of 30 and 40. By the time you have a serious addiction, especially with a drug like marijuana, you probably are older. Their perception is that they are parenting well. Their perception is that they are engaged with their children and that they are aware of what is going on in their environment. That is different from the perception of the children.
Senator Kenny: I cannot tell you how many people have come before this committee and said, ``I am a recreational user and I am fine. Take a look at me. I am answering questions in a sensible way. I made it here today, nobody had to take me by the hand, and I am going to make it home tonight. It has not harmed me, therefore it is okay for the population.'' I am hearing you say, they think they are okay.
If we tested them in some scientific way that measured their performance in a variety of areas, they would not score nearly as well as they think they would?
Ms Simpson: Yes. We all have the same physiology and the body does not eliminate the tar; it remains from 48 to 72 hours. I even went into the detail about the receptor, where it was in the brain. It has to affect those parts of the brain. Now, to what extent does that become harmful? I do not know. With alcohol, we have a blood-level test that we can give at the scene of an accident. When is it too high a level to drive a car? I do not know. It will have an impact.
Senator Kenny: Can you provide us with this study of pilots?
Ms Simpson: I will try to find it for you, yes.
Senator Kenny: Are there other studies like that, demonstrating, for example, the same outcomes with driving?
Ms Simpson: That is what I am trying to relate it to.
Senator Kenny: You are working in that direction?
Ms Simpson: I did not have something on driving, just this one. Maybe it is out there.
Senator Kenny: Do you know of anyone who is doing work in this area?
Ms Simpson: I do not, but I will try to find that study for you. I had people trying to find it for me before today. The way that it works in the brain, it is the complex fine motor skills that are affected, where several things are going on at once. Perceptions of speed and time are involved in driving, and you are trying to operate a variety of things.
Senator Kenny: The last area that you raised that I wanted to touch on this morning has to do with the more subjective issue of relationships. You talked about two users in a family having great difficulty with relationships. How do you measure this? How do you know it is in jeopardy, or is not a high-quality relationship?
Ms Simpson: The reality is, most people are smoking from 5 to 12 joints a day by the time they enter treatment. I do not know how you could possibly engage in meaningful human relationships when you are constantly stoned on marijuana. Because of the way that it affects your brain, it turns you inward and you are not able to process what is going on in your environment.
Senator Kenny: If I may interrupt, typically the testimony would be, ``I was smoking and our relationship became terrific. I mean this was a marvellous experience. Wow, everybody was cool. There was no hostility.'' It is frequently described to the committee as one of the better relationships, or one of the better periods in their lives. You are telling us that like the pilots, it may have seemed better, but you have indices that would show that in fact it was not. Can you give us some examples of those indices that, contrary to the testimony from the user, led you to the conclusion that it was not better? For example, he did not provide rent money that day, or he left that night. You too are giving us anecdotal testimony. The anecdotal testimony we get from users is, ``Wow. Cool. Everything is terrific,'' and you are saying, ``Wrong. You are making the same mistake as the pilots who missed the runway.''
Ms Simpson: THC slows down the brain. After a while, as with all addictions, and I think the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health will agree, you become focused on getting high and maintaining that high. With the amotivational syndrome, which is a kind of flat feeling when you are not high, you do not experience a normal range of human emotions. You want to get high in order to feel normal. When people's drug-seeking behaviour becomes their priority, they are unable to tune into their environment and be aware of the nuances of another person's experience, whether that is their partner or their children. You have to keep in mind that we are dealing with people who have a dependence on marijuana. Some have lost their children, sometimes because of the financial devastation. I still think that it is difficult to be really aware of your environment if you are dependent on marijuana.
Senator Kenny: I am perhaps taking a little literary licence, but last night we had an individual sitting where you are basically saying, ``I do a good day's work. I have not missed showing up. My employer thinks I am a good worker. When I get home, I like to toke up. You guys go home and have a couple of scotches. I am a criminal; you are not. I think that what you are drinking is going to make you aggressive and nasty and mean, and what I am taking is going to make me pleasant and congenial.''
Ms Simpson: Initially. We know that marijuana use over the long term will cause memory deficit problems and amotivational symptoms, which in these examples has been diagnosed as clinical depression. I think there is probably a degree of use that is not harmful. I know that the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has said, ``More than two to three drinks more than five days a week is problem drinking.'' I do not think we have defined that in the case of marijuana because it is an illegal substance, and we would need to do that.
The Chairman: You are giving us page 20 of a longer report. How many people did you treat in a year to produce that paper?
Ms Simpson: I think that the sample number was around 135, but it is pretty representative of what we typically get.
The Chairman: Is it possible to have the full report?
Ms Simpson: That is data. Absolutely.
One thing that was not quite clear, and again I think that the research on marijuana is not conclusive yet, is that it is hard to study the effects of marijuana use during pregnancy. We have another program for women who are pregnant, substance abusing and have young children. We are just starting to look at some studies, and I did put this article in here that suggests that it might have subtle negative effects on neuro-behavioural outcomes, including sleep disturbances, impaired vision problems, difficulty in problem solving, hyperactivity, inattention and that kind of thing. Although I have no factual knowledge, I can say that the children of the users with whom we work do seem to be very hyperactive and have learning disabilities. More research needs to be done on that connection as well.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Our next witnesses are Staff Sergeant Danny Woods and Inspector Dave Roberts from the Windsor Police Service, and Superintendent Ron Taverner from the Toronto Police Service.
Superintendent Ron Taverner, Toronto Police Service: Thank you very much for inviting us to come before you today, Mr. Chairman, and members of the special committee. I am also the chair of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police Substance Abuse Committee, which is why I am here. I believe much of what I have to say today is similar to what you would have heard from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, who presented to you some time ago.
The Chairman: I must tell you that we have heard from various policing organizations, and you are quite effective. The briefs were quite similar. Nobody is contradicting anybody else.
Mr. Taverner: Well, that is important, that we are not diametrically opposed to each other. Certainly these are very important issues for Canadians and particularly for policing organizations. Obviously we have collaborated to form our positions, and I think it is important that we come with a united front, and as you have indicated, you are seeing that. Some of my remarks will be very similar to what you have already heard. I will try to keep them as brief as possible and then present you with our recommendations, because I know my colleagues want to take up most of the time.
In policing, we are exposed to all aspects of both the supply and demand sides of the illegal drug spectrum. By that I mean that on the supply side, we investigate and understand the cultivation and production facets. We investigate and understand the importation, or, as we are now seeing in Canada, the exportation of illegal drugs. We investigate and understand high-level, mid-level and street-level trafficking. We understand the violence associated with illegal drug trafficking at all levels. We investigate and understand the connection between illicit drugs and organized crime, and the link to terrorism.
On the demand side, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police sees the experimentation going on and we investigate the use of illicit drugs by our young people. We see firsthand the increased threat to our youth at risk. We see the impact and influence of illicit drugs on the education and development of our youth, and the peer pressure on them to engage. We see the effects of addiction, the need to feed habits. We investigate the violence and victimization. We investigate crime and disorder in our neighbourhoods and respond to our community's plea for help.
While we recognize the involvement of other groups in society in the facets of the spectrum, I believe we are the only group that is the constant in all facets. From being face to face with each of these facets, we see clearly the impact of each, but with the knowledge gained from our involvement, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police has a unique opportunity to step back and see the big picture. It is from this perspective and this experience that we make our respectful submissions. Our message is that drugs are harmful, including cannabis.
Cannabis is harmful to the health of individuals. The cannabis used today has a 500 per cent higher THC content than in the 1960s and 1970s. There is considerable misinformation about the physiological consequence of cannabis use. There is no doubt that heavy cannabis use has negative health consequences. The most important of these are the following: respiratory damage, physical coordination, pregnancy and post-natal development.
We are aware of the harm caused by cigarette smoking. Does it not follow that there will be the same type of harm from smoking cannabis, plus the negative health consequences previously referenced? There is much obvious harm to the users of other illicit drugs, such as cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and Ecstasy, to name a few. Cannabis use is on the rise and approaching levels not seen since the 1970s. The point is that our current prevention efforts are insufficient to counter the factors driving the escalation. A student survey conducted by the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario, now known as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, in 1995 found that 23 per cent of students reported use in the past year, up from 13 per cent in 1993. The centre did a more recent study in 1999 and found that the percentage was up to 29 percent. Rates of use can vary in different parts of the country. For example, reports of rates of cannabis use are particularly high in street youth, ranging from 66 per cent in Halifax to 92 per cent in Toronto.
I am going to skip over a lot of the information that I have because I understand that you have heard much of this.
The Chairman: In the main thrust of your presentation, on the effects and the danger, you are referring to heavy users?
Mr. Taverner: Yes. I am not talking about the one-time user.
The Chairman: It is an important distinction for us.
Mr. Taverner: Absolutely.
The Chairman: Your definition of heavy users — and I think I know the answer, because I have asked your colleagues across the country this question — is one gram a day?
Mr. Taverner: Yes. Legalization is not the solution. We must not consider legalizing any illicit drug because some say the penalty is too harsh, or because we are spending too much money. Now is the time to mobilize our collective efforts, enhancing our work together and doing what is effective.
According to the 1996 ``Monitoring the Future'' study by the University of Michigan, today's teens are less likely to consider drug use harmful and risky. They are more likely to believe that drug use is widespread and tolerated. They currently feel more pressure to try illegal drugs than at any other time in the past decade. Legalization of illicit drugs would only strengthen these trends. It tells our children that adults believe that drugs can be used responsibly and suggests that there is less risk and that drugs are more acceptable to society.
This conclusion is based upon the level of sanctions on a drug. If a drug is considered legal and there is no sanction, then that would influence a weakened perception of risk. Another influencing force is the media and the power of communication, including media coverage of individuals smoking marijuana in cannabis clubs, telling them that drugs can be taken, can be fun. In this atmosphere, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to reach children and convince them that doing drugs is harmful. Increased drug availability will worsen our crime problem and increase drug use, with terrible consequences for our citizens. No single group in society can solve the problems associated with illicit drug use and abuse. Effective solutions will only be achieved if the various groups in society work together, taking a problem solving approach to the issue.
We have had small successes in the four key target areas where we have focused our efforts. They are prevention, enforcement, rehabilitation and research. Canada is doing many things correctly. Many of the groups in our society have done and are presently doing the right things. What we need to do now is tweak the things that are working well and make them even more effective. The legislation currently in place has both a preventive and a deterrent effect. Due, however, to the lack of strategies, resources and programs, the present prevention phase is not adequately addressing the escalating numbers of young people starting or continuing to use illicit drugs.
The existing Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is necessary in its current form to support prevention and deterrence, as we experienced with laws to support behavioural change on impaired driving, seatbelt use, infant car seats, et cetera. The charges laid for possession of cannabis average less than one charge for each officer in Canada on an annual basis. A significant number are laid incidental to arrest on other charges under the Criminal Code.
Legislation must convey the right message to the public. That message is there is no tolerance of illicit drugs, including cannabis. We need to work on the problems that arise from the perception of the likelihood of offenders being caught, or the lack of consequences when they are.
The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police has three recommendations. Number one: The Government of Canada should retain cannabis as an illegal substance. We do not support legalization of any currently illicit drug. Recommendation number two: The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police strongly recommends that the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs demonstrate a partnership with the House of Commons Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs to set the foundation for a revitalized Canadian drug strategy, bringing together federal, provincial, territorial and municipal levels of government as partners for a safer and healthier Canada, championed through the federal leadership. Recommendation number three: The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police strongly recommends that a Canadian drug strategy receive the profile and dedicated resources necessary to deal with the illicit drug problem in Canada, reflecting a balance in reducing the demand for and the supply of drugs, and based on the four pillars of prevention: enforcement, treatment, rehabilitation and research.
Inspector Dave Roberts, Investigation Division, Windsor Police Service: On behalf of the Chief of Police, Glenn Stannard, from the Windsor Police Service, I would like to introduce myself. I am in the criminal investigation division, and as part of my duties, I oversee the drug enforcement unit. The Windsor Police Service concurs with the stance and the recommendations of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, and we feel that it is a serious issue.
The Windsor Police Service dedicates nine officers to drug enforcement within the City of Windsor. We have a budget of approximately a million dollars a year that we dedicate to personnel and other physical resources. At this time, I would like to introduce Staff Sergeant Dan Woods. He is the officer in charge of our drug enforcement unit and would like to make a presentation.
Staff Sergeant Dan Woods, Drug Enforcement Branch, Windsor Police Service: When I was first contacted by the chief about making this presentation, I spoke to several people assisting the committee and was advised that members wanted to hear about the background, what was going on in the City of Windsor with respect to drugs, and cannabis in particular. As has been stated, I am the officer in charge of the drug enforcement branch in the City of Windsor. Our mandate is to enforce street-level drug dealings. We are to identify street-level drug dealers and try to work our way up to their suppliers. We do not get involved in major projects per se, except on a case-by-case basis, and then we will work under a joint forces working agreement with the RCMP in town, or the OPP.
As you previously heard from Staff Sergeant Dowhayko, his unit is responsible for the border. We will attend at the border if it is a particular case that we have been working on.
One of the biggest problems that we have right now in town, and I am sure you have heard this as you have been going across the country, is with the marijuana grow operations. We dismantled 14 grows in 2000. Last year, we upped that to 36. This year, we had 12 as of the end of May. It is increasing. The estimated street value of the marijuana seized in 2001 was $4.37 million. So far this year, the street value has reached $3.9 million. We are going to more than eclipse last year's total.
There are problems associated with these grows. The people setting them up are very organized. You find one grow, it leads to another, and it is the same situation in each. You may find a third one set up exactly the same. It is obvious that the people know what they are doing structurally. There is violence associated with these grows. There have been murders in the province related to marijuana grow operations. There are dangers associated with the grows for our officers.
We receive information all the time that they are booby-trapped. There was one the other day in Hamilton behind the main door into the grow operation. It would be the control panel with all the hydro set-ups on it, the timers and the hard wires. When the officer would go through that door, he would be exposed, depending on how that board broke up, to live voltage.
It has been necessary to protect the officers. We have had to buy gloves, boots, coveralls and masks. There are chemicals in these grows and particulate in the air from the plants. We do not want the officers breathing this in and having lung problems. In some of the grows we found, people were also producing counterfeit money. We found one recently that had a bill scanner to detect counterfeit monies.
I was asked to research the THC levels for you. The best thing I could come up with was a report from Mark Pearson of the RCMP. He is their resident marijuana grow expert, and according to him, from 1997 to 1999 the THC levels averaged from 5 to 6 per cent. I contacted Health Canada's lab in Scarborough and spoke to an analyst there by the name of Rob Armstrong. He told me that last year, the latest levels they have tested, the average level of THC in marijuana was eight per cent. The maximum level they have found is about 25 per cent. He said you might see higher levels in B.C. He said the minimum level is about one per cent. That would be dependent, of course, on the type of grow, whether it is a hydroponic grow, a forced grow, or some guy growing the stuff in his backyard.
We are very concerned about these grows. They take up a lot of time and manpower. The cases for the 36 we did last year are just starting to appear before the courts now. We are getting a range of sentences, including fines and conditional sentences, and the odd one is going to jail. I was asked if we had problems with any other drug in town, and I do not know if you have come across it yet in your travels, but we are starting to see here a drug called Ketamine. It is an animal anesthetic used by vets. It is not regulated under the CDSA, but under the Food and Drug Act. We have approached our federal prosecutor to see if we could get it placed under the CDSA. From our experience, the people using it are usually in their late teens or early twenties. Ketamine comes in liquid form and they usually boil it off until it becomes a white powder. They will snort it like they would cocaine. They will inject the liquid, and from the information we have received from some of these people, they get what they call an ``out of body'' or ``near death'' experience. They see a white light and feel themselves travelling toward it. People tell us that they actually left their body and were looking down at themselves. One individual told us he injects in his thigh, and before the plunger of the syringe is down, he is out. He will wake up and that syringe is still stuck in his leg. It is prevalent down here. It is unfortunate that we cannot bring charges. It is difficult to lay a charge under the FDA. We would like you to turn your attention to that.
Senator Kenny: You make decisions at least once a year about resource allocation, and when you do that, where does marijuana fit on your list?
Mr. Taverner: We are working at the street level, and we do not specifically assign officers to deal with marijuana. We deal with the whole drug spectrum — Ketamine, Ecstasy, cocaine or heroin.
Senator Kenny: The arrest for marijuana is incidental to something else?
Mr. Taverner: It fits into our strategy on drug enforcement, into which we put a lot of resources. In the area of Toronto where I work, I would estimate that 80 per cent of the crime — robberies, violence, break and enter — is directly related to drug use or drug dealing. We put a great deal of resources into the whole drug issue.
Senator Kenny: Correct me if I am wrong, but you are talking about a basket of chemicals with which you deal to a large extent collectively, without differentiating one from another. There is a group in society that tends to have experience with a range of chemicals, marijuana being one of them, and so if you see someone using it, perhaps that is an indicator that other things are going on that you might want to look at. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this part of the committee's study is focused on marijuana. I think the probable rationale is that the government feels that this is currently the easiest area to examine. Perhaps some members of this committee differ from that view and would like to have a more comprehensive look at it. However, since we are dealing with marijuana, if you had an opportunity to increase your budget, would any of the extra dollars go to this issue?
Mr. Taverner: I think that is a very good question, but it is a very difficult one to answer. Certainly in policing, like in a lot of areas, resources and funding are scarce. We are looking at dealing particularly with marijuana use in high schools. Marijuana use in schools is fairly high, and so we have assigned officers to the high schools to deal with the marijuana issue, along with others. I cannot say specifically they are to deal with that particular issue, but the whole spectrum. Marijuana is one of the prevalent drugs in the high schools in downtown Toronto.
Senator Kenny: In budgeting in all organizations, not just police organizations, people frequently do not do a ``bottom up'' allocation. It is much more a case of, this organization needs ``x'' per cent, and if we are going to cut, everybody is going to take the same five per cent cut, or whatever it is. It is very difficult to have a clean slate when people are actually working in one area. They become attached to it and say, ``I would not be working here if it was not important, and therefore I want my share of the new resources,'' or ``I want my share of the resources that are available.'' If you could take a step back from that for a moment, and think of a pot of money out there for risk management, risk reduction and trying to get through to the kids in schools, is that money best spent coming out of a police budget; or is it best spent coming out of a school budget; or is it best spent coming out of a non-governmental organization budget? Maybe this is a very hypothetical question, because it will never happen this way, but sometimes when you are writing Senate reports, you try to step back and say, ``If I could start with a clean page, how would I re- organize this to make it a more effective process?'' Could you comment on that, please?
Mr. Taverner: I think that that is a very important issue, and if we take a step back, see police hopefully as part of the solution, and look at the big picture, we need to put more emphasis on a Canadian drug strategy. We need to put more effort into prevention. I honestly believe that that is where a lot of our resources should be going, with policing as part of that. We are only one piece of the puzzle, but certainly we need to focus on prevention, as we did with young people and impaired driving. How young people view drinking and driving has changed substantially, and that is because of a concentrated effort by a number of agencies, including the police. Government, social agencies and community groups worked together on the problem, and I believe we are reaping great benefits. That is the strategy that we need to look at in dealing with cannabis use.
Senator Kenny: Police are generally seen as authority figures. It is presumed that police are on the more conservative end of the spectrum in society, and we know from our experience in dealing with young people and smoking that one of the motivators for young people to engage in that sort of risky behaviour — which is arguably far more dangerous than using marijuana — is the desire to thwart authority figures. They say, ``Well, if those old birds do not want me to do that, that is exactly what I am going to do, just to show them that I am cool.'' Do you reflect on that? If you do, would you share your views with us on who should convey this message to rebellious adolescents? The three of you rebelled in your adolescence, as did we. Notwithstanding that I am kidding around a little with you, I am trying to address a serious point. Are you folk the best people to be giving out this message in the schools, and if so, why?
Mr. Roberts: We have a VIP program in Windsor, where officers go into the schools, usually at the grade six level, and conduct classes. It is the Values, Influences and Peers program. Every school in the city is assigned an officer to run a VIP program. The officers warn the kids of the perils of drug usage, including marijuana. The feedback is that the officers are very influential with the kids, and they listen. They listen to the kids. When the kids grow up, they still remember the officers and the message. And it seems to be working to some extent, at least in our city. I think that we need to provide widespread education when they are very young.
Senator Kenny: Inspector, I grew up in a small community and I can remember visiting the police station there. Constable Clark was my guy, and we were pleased when he became Corporal Clark. It was a small enough community that there was a relationship between the police and the kids. He did not address drug problems, but he probably did a lot for recruitment and the general image of the police. You knew him as a human being, not just as a police officer, and as a consequence, you had a very different perspective of him than of somebody driving around in a police car and to whom you never talked. There was a study done in Minnesota dealing with youth and smoking, where for two years, in 14 of the school districts, a fairly intensive education program was conducted by teachers and other authority figures. In the other 14 school districts, there was no educational program related to smoking. At the end of the two years, they discovered that smoking had gone up in the 14 districts where the teachers had intervened, and had gone down in the districts where there was no intervention. Have you ever measured the results where you have no programs in some schools, and programs in other schools? You are giving us anecdotal evidence from the presenters, as opposed to what the results might actually be down the road. You are giving us the impressions of the presenters after they come back from the meeting, which presumably would normally go fairly well. I cannot imagine a police officer getting booed out of a grade six class. Can you comment on that, sir?
Mr. Roberts: We have not conducted any studies such as you mentioned to determine whether people are influenced by a certain program.
Senator Kenny: Is it a dumb idea?
Mr. Roberts: No, I do not think it is a dumb idea. We just have not done it. Everybody is basically singing off the same song sheet, telling them that drugs can affect their lives, giving them examples and trying to warn them of the perils of drug abuse.
Senator Kenny: You are allocating a significant amount of resources to this program. How do you measure its effectiveness, other than by gathering anecdotal evidence from the people delivering it?
Mr. Roberts: We do not measure it statistically, but upon speaking with the teachers and the individuals involved in the program, we found that it had a very positive impact. Like your Officer Clark, Officer Dave or Officer Ron goes into the school and the kids look up to him and go to him with other issues. The feedback has been positive.
Senator Kenny: I am not disputing that it would be positive in a number of other areas, and creating a bond or a form of trust between police officers and young children sounds to me like a very good thing to do. I am trying to determine whether or not it has any impact on subsequent marijuana or other drug use, and I am wondering if you would consider some form of evaluation other than an anecdotal one as the program goes forward?
Mr. Roberts: You bring up a very good point, and I will certainly pass that on. That is putting a different spin on it, but I think that could be tried in Windsor.
Mr. Taverner: I think every community is a little different. For example, we have over 700 schools in Toronto, so those types of comparisons may be difficult to do and may not be relevant. The effects of prevention programs, whether to do with illicit drugs or other areas, are very hard to measure, and I think we all understand that. For example, if we had a prevention program for break and enter, it would be hard to measure how many break and enters we have actually prevented, and I think it is the same with illicit drug use. It is very difficult to measure those things, but I think it is all part of the big picture, where we have to work collectively. It is just not a police issue, as you well know. It is a societal issue, and we all have to get onboard, which is why we need a comprehensive drug strategy for this country and the funding to support it.
Senator Kenny: Superintendent, you would agree that asking the police commission for funding for a school drug education program is a walk in the park compared with asking for a new helicopter?
Mr. Taverner: True.
Senator Kenny: To the Inspector and Staff Sergeant from Windsor, what are your relationships with those across the river? Do you have contacts with the various drug enforcement agencies there? If so, how would you characterize them?
Mr. Woods: I do have contacts with several agencies in the States, whether it is the FBI, DEA or Detroit police.
Senator Kenny: Do they come over here? Do you go over there?
Mr. Woods: It is usually on a phone call basis when we have information. We deal a lot with U.S. Customs, U.S. Immigration, people who are running the border posts on a case-by-case basis, and that is because this is a street-level enforcement unit. Any time they have something in particular that they want us to look at, the communication is there, and I have not had a problem.
Mr. Roberts: We have had a very cooperative relationship with them over the years.
The Chairman: I would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony.
Senators, we will now hear from Dr. Paul Garfinkel and Dr. Patrick Smith.
Dr. Paul E. Garfinkel, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health: Dr. Smith and I are delighted to be here and pleased to have this opportunity to work with you as you fulfil your important mandate. We have provided a written brief and some background material for you. This morning, we will provide you with some of the highlights of that.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, CAMH, is the largest mental health and addiction facility in Canada. We have been designated a Centre of Excellence in Research and Training by the World Health Organization. We are a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. We operate very large clinical and research facilities in Toronto. Across Ontario, we have a number of satellite offices, enabling us to work with communities to identify and address addiction and mental health related needs in local communities.
We wish to comment on two things: first, our position on decriminalization of cannabis possession; and second, the philosophy of harm reduction approach and the ways in which our organization applies it.
Two years ago, the centre adopted a position supporting the removal of criminal sanctions for the possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use. We took this position based on research and analysis conducted by our scientists. Some of these scientists have already appeared before you.
We believe that the current sanctions, along with being ineffective in deterring use, exact a disproportionately heavy cost on individual users and on society relative to the dangers of the drug itself. CAMH does not in any way support or encourage the use of cannabis. What we do recommend is that possession be decriminalized and converted into a civil offence under the federal Contraventions Act.
We also recommend careful monitoring to evaluate the impact of such a change and to inform policy decisions, as well as an appropriate level of funding for prevention and treatment programs to minimize the prevalence of cannabis use and its associated harms. We recognize that cannabis is not a benign drug. There are long-term costs, negative health implications and behavioural consequences in using this drug. However, we also note that most cannabis use is sporadic or experimental and is not likely to be associated with serious negative consequences.
As I just mentioned, cannabis is not a benign drug. It poses a special risk for those who also experience mental health problems. A significant part of our clinical work involves dealing with people who have both an addiction and a mental health concern. As well, a mental illness can be worsened by the use of cannabis.
We do feel that the current response to cannabis use, dominated by enforcement, has proven ineffective and costly. Cannabis use is growing. Since 1977, the centre and its founding partner, the Addiction Research Foundation, have conducted studies of Ontario students every two years. Hence, we have a very long history of tracking drug use. In the most recent survey, we found that about 7 per cent of Ontarians used cannabis in the past year. In students, however, depending on the community, cannabis use varied between 23 and 44 per cent. The survey also showed that this use of cannabis amongst students exceeds that of tobacco. For those who are in grades 7 to 12, 29 per cent reported use cannabis; 23 per cent reported tobacco use. This is a good indication that the forces at play in the decision by students to use — laws and other forms of moral disapproval — have little influence on the behaviour of students.
Given that offences related to cannabis account for the largest proportion of the $400 million spent annually by the criminal justice system, and are overwhelmingly committed by young men for whom the threat of criminal sanctions have proven to be ineffective, we believe we should redirect our resources to where they can have a greater impact. With regard to our treatment approach, we believe that a certain level of substance abuse is inevitable in our society and that its dangers can most effectively be addressed through a public health approach.
Our treatment approach, regardless of the substance involved, is based on a harm reduction philosophy. This comes from a public health framework and is in keeping with good clinical practice today. By this, we mean focusing on reducing the adverse health and social consequences of substance abuse, without necessarily requiring total cessation of drug use.
Our addiction programs offer a full spectrum of care: withdrawal management; assessment and case management; outpatient, day treatment and residential programs for a variety of substance abuse problems. What is important is that clients are matched with programs according to their needs. This is not a one-size-fits-all model. Treatments for people who are suffering from substance abuse have to be individually tailored, beginning with the least costly and least intrusive form of care that has been empirically shown to be effective. In our experience, treatment is effective. It is associated with significant decreases in substance use and dependency.
I shall now turn to our recommendations.
We recommend decriminalization of cannabis possession and an increased emphasis on the other pillars — harm reduction, treatment and prevention. Like Vancouver, our approach is rooted in the belief that harm reduction must be central to any drug strategy as part of a balanced response to substance use problems.
We recommend a strong emphasis on public education and prevention, and fully support the RCMP in their call for a national prevention program with adequate resources to sustain and extend these efforts. CAMH develops extensive resource materials and education programs, both for the public and specialized audiences, including educators and students. A number of these resource materials has been forwarded to your committee. For example, we participated in producing the document ``Preventing Substance Use Problems Among Young People: A Compendium of Best Practices.'' That document was published last year by Health Canada. We also provide a range of support to communities throughout Ontario to design their own evidence-based approaches to support health and prevent illness.
We strongly feel there has been inadequate investment in addiction treatment services. This is indicative of a broader systemic problem that requires a federal investment through a coordinated national drug strategy, including a focus on treatment as well as the other pillars — harm reduction, prevention and enforcement.
We need enforcement mechanisms such as fines to show that we as a society prefer to have some control over the use of substances that can sometimes pose a threat to the individual and/or to the common good. This approach to cannabis is imbedded in our overall harm reduction approach.
In terms of the hospital portion of what we do, it is important for you to realize that cannabis is not the most important, most frequent reason people come to us for care. About 10 per cent of our addiction-related clients speak to cannabis as their primary drug of concern. For alcohol, it is about 46 per cent, and for cocaine, 20 per cent. Remember, this is in people coming for care.
I should also point out that the number of those coming for care and identifying cannabis use has grown tremendously in the past four years. The use of all these drugs continues to extract a heavy cost on users, and on society, and must be addressed by a comprehensive strategy based on the philosophy of harm reduction.
Harm reduction is gaining acceptance in our community across the country, but still provokes some debate. We have defined harm reduction as follows: ``Harm reduction is any program or policy designed to reduce drug-related harm without requiring the cessation of drug use. Interventions may be targeted at the individual, the family, community or society.''
The harm reduction guiding principles involve a number of things. First, there is pragmatism. In other words, we accept that some level of use is inevitable in our society but that this view varies according to culture and cultural values. Hence, marijuana use in high school students is very different from heroin use in the suburbs.
The second principle is focus on harms. Harm reduction focuses on reducing the harmful consequences of substance use without necessarily requiring any reduction in use.
The third principle is prioritization of goals. Harm reduction strategies prioritise each user's goals, with an emphasis on those harms that are immediate and achievable. The eventual goal may be abstinence but it does not have to begin this way.
The pathway to abstinence may be very circuitous, depending on the individual. This involves flexibility and maximization of intervention options, the fourth guiding principle. We recognize individual differences; hence, treatment must be geared to the needs of each individual. It cannot be applied indiscriminately to all.
Autonomy is another principle. The user's decision to use is acknowledged as a personal choice for which he or she must take responsibility. It is recognized that people go through different phases and that as such motivation may vary from phase to phase.
We feel strongly that any treatment or prevention approach must be evaluated for its effectiveness. Although the research base is growing in support of a broad range of various harm reduction approaches, gaps do remain in the scientific evaluation of controversial programs, such as the safe crack kits. What we need is an unbiased, pragmatic commitment to reducing harm in whatever manner proves to be most effective.
For clients, harm reduction is one option among others on a broad spectrum of approaches that include programs with an abstinence-based philosophy. Harm reduction does not preclude abstinence as an eventual goal of any treatment approach. Contrary to popular belief, most drug users would not choose a path to addiction again, but specific personal, physiological and social circumstances may make abstinence an unrealistic goal for a particular user at a particular moment in time.
In our brief, we have outlined some harm reduction initiatives related to substance abuse. I should like to comment briefly on several of these.
One relates to attitudes to opiate users. Drug use in our society is subject to significant stigma in general. We believe that opiate users are often subject to the most extreme forms of stigma and discrimination — and this is true not only with the broad public, but also among physicians and caregivers. We conducted a survey of Ontario family doctors, normally a point of first contact with the health care system. We have seen significant bias, discrimination and lack of knowledge among primary physicians. The outcome of the survey reveals a strong need to educate primary care physicians in the diagnosis, understanding and care of people who are misusing substances.
The second approach relates to methadone maintenance for heroin addiction. Many of the clinicians we interviewed see heroin addiction as a hopeless treatment situation. This is not true. Methadone offers a viable alternative to heroin in drug substitution programs. It produces neither intoxication nor euphoria. It does not produce lethargy or impairment, it decreases cravings and drug seeking, and it has very few side effects. In about 97 per cent of the time, people who enter our methadone program are active heroin users. After four and a half years, only 8 per cent of those in the program were still using heroin. For heroin users for whom it works, methadone helps them to stabilize their physiological functioning to the degree that they can get the rest of their lives in order. The cost of methadone is about $5,000 per year; incarceration costs about $50,000 a year. Despite these dramatic benefits, resources are needed to establish more programs to meet the existing needs for heroin/opiate addicts.
An investment in evaluation of harm reduction programs such as this one may be hampered by continued fears that these approaches condone and support continued drug use among borderline criminal populations. In reality, what they offer is a crucial first point of contact with empathic frontline caregivers who are able to win their trust and who then encourage users to accept further support from a health system they have previously rejected.
The final harm reduction approach that I thought I would comment on relates to some of the youth initiatives. Much of the current debate is driven by concerns for young people and the effects of our public policies on their use. We have seen that a prohibitionist response does not work for adolescents who have developmental needs to take risks and to assert their autonomy, much as your comments to the last speakers indicated.
Harm reduction focuses on getting accurate and unbiased information on the harm of use to the potential users in order to help them make informed decisions about whether to use and how to minimize their risk.
It is particularly important to address youth substance abuse issues because we know that youth will turn to cannabis to cope with concerns about mental health, depression, self-esteem, identity and their own futures. As such, there is a need to identify those youths who are particularly vulnerable to mental health problems and who are turning to cannabis as a result. In other words, those who are turning to substances with a potential mental health problem are at a particular risk.
We have been very involved in producing resource materials and programs for young people. I mentioned earlier the compendium of best practices. We have also been involved in the production of ``The Student Alcohol and Drug Use Policy and School Curriculum Resources.'' It addresses prevention of drug use among students from grades 1 to 10. Students themselves were very involved in their development. Certain principles of health promotion and prevention require a multi-pronged effort and as such are based on needs as described by the users themselves, or the potential users.
``Opening Doors'' is directed to youth in the transition year of grade 9, which is a critical year. All our surveys show that the first incident of marijuana use occurs at about age 14. Our ``Harm Reduction for Rural Youth'' project involved youth members on a project team that received training in conducting a needs assessment and a survey in their own high schools. ``Let 'Em Go'' is another resource for youth service providers or peer leaders that provides information on coordinating youth-driven projects. ``First Contact'' is a brief treatment protocol directed at youth between the ages of 14 and 24 who are using substances. These are all described for you in the compendium and some of our background literature.
In conclusion, we want to emphasize that the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health knows, based on research, that the current sanctions for cannabis possession exact a disproportion heavy cost on individual users and on society relative to the dangers of the drug itself and that current sanctions are ineffective in deterring use. We recognize that cannabis is not a benign drug and that frequent and long-term cannabis use has been associated with negative health and behavioural consequences. However, most cannabis use is sporadic or experimental and is not likely to be associated with serious consequences.
We recommend that a more appropriate legal control framework to deal with cannabis use be put in place that will result in a more effective and efficient control system, produce fewer negative social and individual consequences and maintain public health and safety. We also recommend very careful monitoring to evaluate the impact of such a change and inform future policy decisions, as well as an appropriate level of funding for prevention and treatment programs to minimize the prevalence of cannabis use and its associated harms.
As such, we support the decriminalization of cannabis possession. We believe that the decriminalization of cannabis possession will not lead to increased use based on supporting evidence from other jurisdictions that have introduced similar controls.
Our centre supports an increased emphasis on other pillars of a comprehensive drug strategy — harm reduction, treatment and prevention. In particular, we would like to emphasize the importance of harm reduction and increased investment in harm reduction initiatives and their evaluation. We recommend a strong emphasis on public education and prevention activities and fully support the RCMP's call for a national prevention program with adequate resources to sustain and extend these efforts. We also encourage increased investment in addiction treatment services.
As previously indicated, these are only highlights of CAMH's positions on decriminalization of cannabis and on harm reduction. Please refer to our complete submission to the Senate.
Dr. Smith and I would be very happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Senator Kenny: You may not be qualified to answer this question, and I would ask you to decide for yourself. Does decriminalization do anything for harm reduction, or is it society's way of expressing a moral judgment?
Dr. Garfinkel: We have all been brought up with certain attitudes, including attitudes to mental illness and to people who use substances, who are deemed to have a kind of moral weakness. Traditionally, hence, we believe that punishment is in order for such individuals. I do not believe that it has an effect on harm reduction at all.
Dr. Patrick Smith, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health: To add to that, the evidence supports that there may be harms caused by the disproportion of sanctions that are adding to the global harm that someone who is an individual substance user may face. In other words, not only do our current tactics not reduce harm, they may be adding to harm by getting them involved in a criminal system.
Senator Kenny: I follow your argument and the costs associated with it. We heard from a witness here in Windsor who suggested that the law provides certain benchmarks for behaviour. That witness went on to say that to remove those benchmarks would in fact suggest that, for example, abstinence, which you dealt with, is not necessarily a desirable outcome.
I should like to hear your comments on that, please.
Dr. Smith: Our understanding of decriminalization is that possession of cannabis would remain punishable under the law but that the proposed reforms would bring the offence into greater balance with the severity of cost of the punishment. Again, in the Netherlands, for example, where it is not a criminal offence, cannabis use is much lower than in the United States, which has one of the toughest approaches to cannabis use.
Hence, according to the evidence, taking cannabis out of the criminal realm and putting it into the civil realm would make result in any change in the user's decision to use or not.
Dr. Garfinkel: Your question is very interesting, because it does relate somewhat to your previous comments. I agree with you, sir, that the law provides certain perimeters and that those perimeters are very important for us as individuals and as a community. We have to ask about the consequences of these perimeters. The perimeters for you and I may not be the same as the perimeters for a 14 year old. Hence, the consequences of the perimeters for a 14 year old may actually be encouraging.
Senator Kenny: As we see with smoking?
Dr. Garfinkel: Exactly.
The Chairman: A civil offence implies a fine. What if they do not pay? I am asking that because our British colleagues are studying the same issue. They are concluding that it is not a way to go, but I am ready to discuss that. Will we not end up in the same or even worse situation? As you know, even though possession is a criminal offence now, enforcement is not the top priority of enforcement organizations. One per cent of users are charged. Will we not end up in a tougher environment?
Dr. Smith: Interestingly, the last panel talked about growers often walking, that very few of them get jail time or enforcement. When I think about it, if schools did prevention programs — they would be matched to who it is going to be most effective with — that would free up enforcement to get after these growing operations, to make sure they are heavily sanctioned.
Hence, in many ways, I hear what you are saying, that taking the criminal offence out of possession may be seen as taking a bite out of the enforcement, but it may actually allow enforcement to refocus on something more poignant, in terms of addressing the enforcement component of the cannabis problem.
Individual possession charges takes up a lot of an officer's time and the court's time. That time may be better spent in other enforcement activities.
Senator Kenny: Yes, but you are faced with conundrums such as ``prostitution is legal but soliciting is not.''
There will be problems if it is legal to possess cannabis but not legal to grow it or wholesale it or carry it from one point to another. There will be folks like we heard from last night, saying: ``I have folks that theoretically can use it, but we are left out on the street trying to find the right seeds to grow. And we don't get the volumes we need.''
Dr. Smith: Consistent with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and the four strategies of decriminalizing, that it is still not legal to possess, is that there are still sanctions involved with possession. It is not so disproportionably out of whack from the existing sanctions.
Senator Kenny: What you are really saying is, ``Go ahead.'' All you are really addressing is, ``We're not going to throw you in the slammer.''
Dr. Smith: However, it will not be as legal as having alcohol. If one was caught with possession, that individual would be face some type of sanction — fine only, civil offence option, diversion option.
The Chairman: Your preoccupation centres on the abuse of the substance.
Dr. Smith: That is right.
The Chairman: For the majority of users, abuse is not the case; correct?
Dr. Smith: That is right.
Dr. Garfinkel: That is correct.
The Chairman: Do you see the problem we have with what you are saying about decriminalization? We understand what you are proposing, but you do not want to go the full nine yards: We are Canadians and we do not want to hurt too much.
Dr. Garfinkel: I think there is some truth to what you are saying. I think our society is not ready to go further.
With what we have proposed, I think you are correct in saying that we are trading a certain set of problems for other problems.
What Dr. Smith is saying is that the problems you remove are some of the worst consequences of the criminal side of this, and that is a huge benefit for us.
Senator Kenny: We think you are cleaning up one neighbourhood and shifting —
Dr. Garfinkel: I understand that.
Senator Kenny: My last area relates to your comments about the RCMP views being relevant. Are these folks really relevant in this discussion? We all know why they are here — because they are the ones dealing with this on a day-to- day basis. However, they are dealing with it from a special optic. We turn to them because they have some data; we turn to them because they will come; we turn to them because through their associations they have developed views on it.
What weight should we attach to what they have to say? Second, what role should they have as we move down the road on these issues?
Dr. Garfinkel: I think they are extremely important on the enforcement side, on the supply side. In terms of health prevention promotion, the literature shows that how it is delivered is as important as what is delivered. There needs to be a multifaceted approach. There needs to be teacher education. There needs to be student and family education. We need to hit this from every angle, and it is best delivered according to the needs of the people and often by the people.
When I talk to my kids, their eyes blur over. When their friends talk to them, they are getting the real goods.
Senator Kenny: How do we get the real goods to the friends? It is similar to how kids learn about sex. They get the real goods from their friends, in playgrounds, coffee shops and bars.
Dr. Smith: As Dr. Garfinkel mentioned, in many of our initiatives around youth, we have involved the users and non-users in the development and the delivery of these prevention programs. They are very much active participants in the development of our programs, and then we go the next step and evaluate effectiveness.
Senator Kenny: If it gives you any comfort — and you may already know this — the Atlanta Center for Disease Control, in its tobacco programs, say that any program that is not developed by kids and delivered by kids will not be effective with kids, that it is as simple as that.
Dr. Garfinkel: I agree with that.
Think of drunk driving and how our generation grew up with it. My kids would never think of drinking and driving. Why? They are convinced of the harms. There has been a harm reduction approach to drunk driving. Kids today do not believe that sporadic marijuana use is in any way going to harm them, so programs that over-exaggerate do not have any impact on them.
Senator Kenny: The witness just prior to you used the example of a pilot who had smoked a couple of joints and who thought that he was going down the centre of the runaway when in fact he was on a totally different runway. What is your comment with respect to this?
I cannot count the number of witnesses that are regular users of marijuana who have told us, essentially: ``I am proof that this is not a problem. I'm functioning fine.'' The previous witness said that this type of attitude is common to all users, that one of the by-products of marijuana use is the user who thinks he or she is okay.
How does one address that, particularly in the context of educating young people who are very suspicious of people like us? Their own evidence is telling them that they are fine and functioning well. How do we communicate to them that perhaps they are not? How can we help them to understanding the negative side effects, the negative consequences?
There is no evidence that sporadic use of cannabis has negative consequences. If we share that with them, perhaps we they will listen to us about the other side effects. We are being honest with them; we are giving them the real goods.
Short-term gain always wins over long-term pain. It is just not human nature, otherwise. A good time now versus telling them that life will be hell 20 years from now: ``Yeah, sure. In the long term, we are all going to be dead,'' will be their response.
Dr. Garfinkel: There have to be clear consequences for using all kinds of substances, when you are putting yourself or others at risk. There are issues other than substances, however. People talking on cell phones when they are driving is at least as big a problem, as well.
Senator Kenny: I agree. There has to be a fast payback for kids, 24 hours, maybe 4 hours. If things are good that day, that is terrific. If we say, ``Trust me, if you start a savings account now and put 10 per cent into every year, by the time you are 65 you will have a comfortable retirement,'' their eyes glaze over.
Dr. Garfinkel: How do you explain the fact that kids these days have very different attitudes about drinking and driving?
Senator Kenny: They saw immediate consequences. They had friends who got nailed.
Dr. Garfinkel: Exactly.
Senator Kenny: As well, Mothers Against Drunk Driving put a human face on it. Seeing half a dozen mothers talking about Johnny who was alive a couple of weeks ago drove the issue home.
We had great difficulty putting a face to it in the tobacco wars.
Dr. Smith: That is one of the examples of a significant investment in public awareness and public education campaigns. There has also been a positive impact on the health promotion and prevention perspective.
As scientists, I think most experts in the field, faced with the choice of making one substance illegal — drugs, alcohol or tobacco — based on individual harm and societal harm would not choose cannabis. Based on what the data tells us, no expert would choose to make cannabis illegal over what we know about alcohol and tobacco.
The Chairman: As you know, there is a lot of data out there, and much of it is contradictory. However, we will have to recommend to the government not only a way of sorting out the data, but also staying current with the knowledge and making sure that we have access to unbiased and mutual data. Would you support the creation of an independent body?
Dr. Garfinkel: The Canadian public certainly needs high-quality data. There is all kinds of data that is unfiltered, not translated in ways that the ordinary person could use it. There is a definite need.
The Chairman: When we were in Moncton, witnesses there were using your documentation, ``Best Practices,'' published by Health Canada. If you were to hear them speaking, you would be astonished by what they are doing with what you are saying. So the data is important.
The most important component of our concern is prevention, which also needs to be properly written up and taught to those who are going to deliver prevention programs.
Everybody is acting in good faith, but in so doing often are influencing the raw material, the good data, with their own beliefs and intents, and that is wrong.
Dr. Smith: That is what we see in our organization — clinicians who feel strongly anecdotally about the people they are helping. We also know that as scientists we have to step back and say, ``Let's make sure we evaluate it and that the reasons we think something is effective are the reasons that it really is effective.'' Prevention programs are complex and difficult to evaluate. Nonetheless, we must be more rigorous in our evaluation of them. Instead of saying that we think something works well because people tell us they like it, we have to marry all the data; we must subject our prevention initiatives to the same level of scrutiny regarding the evaluation itself.
Dr. Garfinkel: I wish to comment on this from my own practice. I deal a lot with people who have eating disorders, anorexia nervosa and bulimia. In the last five years, people have said that we should try to prevent these disorders. Twenty studies have grown up around the world, five of which show very definitely that a prevention program can make things worse. We must recognize that prevention programs are powerful tools for good and for bad. Unless an effective evaluation mechanism is put in place, it is not possible to know whether you are helping or harming.
The Chairman: Let me thank you both for attending here today.
Senators, our next witness is Mr. Randy Cormier.
Mr. Randy Cormier, Counsellor/Group Leader, Brentwood Recovery Home: Thank you for giving us this opportunity to discuss an issue that is very close to our hearts. I will begin by telling you a little bit about what we are about.
I am a certified addictions counsellor, certified by the Canadian Society of Counsellors and Therapists. Brentwood is a recovery home committed to providing compassionate care and treatment in a residential setting for persons whose primary problem is alcohol and drug abuse. In addition, Brentwood offers and provides non-residential support for their families. Referrals are accepted from hospitals, physicians, community agencies, companies and families; as well, there are many self-referrals.
All Brentwood counselling staff and group leaders have professional training and are certified. Brentwood Recovery Home was started in 1964 as Charity House by Father Paul Charbonneau, who is the executive director. We started with 10 beds, and over the years it has continued to grow. On any given day, we have 30 short-term beds in operation and 20 long-term beds. At various times of the year, however, we provide additional beds for increased numbers of clients. At times, the numbers of clients on program reach 70 men and 24 women on a daily basis. Since 1964, we have admitted 18,500 men; since the women's program began in 1984, we have admitted 2,700 women. We also offer support groups for women, children and youth, weekly alumni support, follow-up meetings and after care meetings here and in the surrounding communities, Chatham and the London area. Support is also offered for couples; as well, our establishment offers individual consultation, daily alumni support and follow-up meetings. On a yearly basis, we average 700 to 800 admissions.
In our experience of drug and alcohol addiction, there is no doubt that cannabis not only causes psychological dependency for many, but also is the main gateway to other serious drug experimentation and addictions.
In 1981, the average age of our residents was 35 to 50 years old. They were being admitted mostly for alcohol and various drug dependencies. Approximately 65 per cent to 70 per cent were being admitted strictly for alcohol abuse. By 1991, 10 years later, the average age of our residents, for both men and women, has dropped to 18 to 40 years old. Sixty-two per cent of these residents are cross-addicted, meaning drugs and alcohol.
Approximately 97 per cent of those with serious drug abuse started with marijuana. We know this from our intake summary and the adverse consequences test, both of which are tools used for admission and discharge criteria required by the Ministry of Health. The individuals who suffer from drug dependencies or who are cross-addicted started using marijuana at the early age of 13 to 15.
There is no doubt, given these findings and our experience over the years, that marijuana clearly introduces individuals to other drugs that not only are emotionally, but also physically addictive and dangerous. We have seen families and lives torn apart because of the use of marijuana. In many cases, individuals who are addicted to cannabis resort to crimes of various natures in order to get their high. It does not matter whether an individual's dependency is psychological or chemical. A person who is addicted to alcohol or drugs, including marijuana, needs to escape from the daily fears, trials, and emotions that face them. An individual will go to almost any length to get a high or the euphoria associated with its use. Marijuana is extremely expensive, resulting in automobile, home and other types of burglaries, prostitution, drug trafficking, et cetera. We do realize that not everyone who uses resorts to these measures.
Over and over, we see that those addicted to cannabis have lost interest in life and opportunities. The use of marijuana has interfered with their hobbies, interests, goals and ambitions. They live a life of fantasy and not of reality. They do not see people and situations as challenges and opportunities to grow and enjoy, but more as obstacles and people on their back. Their decision-making processes are greatly impaired, and many of their decisions made while under the influence of marijuana are harmful and in many cases even catastrophic, with lifetime consequences.
For example, relationships with family and friends often are not only strained, but also in many cases severed forever, resulting in divorces, assaults, separations and disharmony. Loss of interest in education, or not being able to cope, is common. Minor to severe financial problems are common. Performance in the workforce is affected due to the lack of interest and use on the job. In many cases, this can result in reprimands or termination, thereby creating higher unemployment and even greater emotional and financial problems in families.
There is no doubt in our minds that driving under the influence of cannabis can be as deadly as driving under the influence of alcohol. In some cases, driving under the influence of cannabis is even more dangerous because many marijuana users believe their driving abilities are not affected at all. Many believe they are better drivers when they are high. They do not believe that their perception, reflexes, attention and capabilities are greatly impaired, but rather enhanced. Many individuals who have been through recovery, will admit with great regret that they drove while under the influence of marijuana when they had their children, spouses, friends and strangers in the car, putting the lives of so many at risk. Many have admitted to minor, severe and, in a few cases, even fatal accidents while driving under the influence of marijuana alone. There admit fully that these accidents were caused by lack of perception and diminished reflex abilities while under the influence.
In closing, on a moral point of view, we are opposed to the legalization of cannabis. We deal on a daily basis with the disease of alcoholism and drug abuse. Although this disease, which affects so many in our community, is a disease about self, it affects and can destroy entire families. The actual disease is not the alcohol, marijuana, legal or illegal substances we abuse or are addicted to. They are only the painkillers of the disease, not the disease itself. Nevertheless, they are dangerous. The legalization of cannabis would make it more accessible for everyone; it would contribute to tearing apart the family structure. Children would rebel against parents.
Spiritually, our growth, development, guidance and love come from family and friends. If cannabis were to be legalized it would create a great many problems for parents and children alike. We would be sending the wrong message to our youth.
Cannabis is dangerous. It destroys families and relationships. It most certainly is a gateway to even more dangerous drugs. It can create crime, accidents, emotional and physical assaults, financial problems, divorce, sexual promiscuity among the youth, and spiritual and emotional separation. We are asking the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs to take our findings into account when it tables its report in August 2002.
The Chairman: What you are telling us is not at all contradictory to the findings we have already. The point of the discussion paper — and I presume you have read the discussion paper — is that only a small minority of cannabis users will evolve to harder drugs. That is exactly what you are saying in your brief.
Mr. Cormier: In our experience, and taking into consideration that not a lot of people will admit to having problems with marijuana, a great majority of the people we treat started with cannabis.
The Chairman: Are you saying that a great majority of people on harder drugs started with marijuana?
Mr. Cormier: That is correct.
The Chairman: You can understand the potential number problem we would have. Ten per cent of the Canadian population regularly use marijuana. You have a large number of patients, but you would have a greater number of patients if it were the case that marijuana use leads to other drugs.
Thank you, Mr. Cormier:
Our final witness is Bill Elliott.
Mr. Bill Elliott, Acting Regional Director, Customs Border Services, Windsor-St.Clair Division, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency: Since the committee has already had a national presentation, we will restrict our comments to the Windsor-St. Clair Division, to give you some insight into what is happening in this part of the country.
The Windsor-St. Clair Division encompasses all modes of transport for the entry of travellers and commercial goods into Canada. The primary ports of entry in Windsor are the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit and Canada Tunnel; for the Sarnia area, it is the Bluewater Bridge. These three operations process a combined annual total of 23 million travellers — which represents more than 21 per cent of the national volumes — and 2.6 million commercial vehicles, which represents 45 per cent of the national total.
The Ambassador Bridge is not only the busiest crossing for trucks, it is actually the busiest crossing overall in Canada for entries. The D&C tunnel is the second busiest crossing in Canada. The Bluewater Bridge in Sarnia is the second busiest in the country for trucks and the fifth largest overall in Canada. So this area is the busiest region in Canada for entry.
Our division also includes three ferry crossings. These are the Pelee Island Ferry crossing in Lake Erie, and the Walpole Island and Sombra ferry crossing in the St. Clair River. These locations process an additional 320,000 travellers each year.
We also have two large rail operations, one in Sarnia and one in Windsor. More than 350,000 rail cars a year enter Canada through those two operations. It represents more than 70 per cent of the rail cars that enter Canada yearly. More than 28,000 commercial rail travellers were processed last year aboard daily Amtrak service between Chicago and Toronto. In addition, the two CCRA-staffed airports in London and Windsor process over 2,600 chartered and scheduled flights each year.
The division also operates a telephone reporting centre, TRC, where both private aircraft and private vessels entering Canada report to CCRA at any of the 108 designated customs reporting stations located along 500 kilometres of international waterway. Eight municipal airports are also processed through this call centre. Over 32,000 passage reports were received last year processing the entry of over 124,000 passengers and crew.
The above figures reflect the significance of the Windsor-St. Clair Division in the international movement of people and goods along Canada's primary trade route. The CCRA must balance the need for effective free movement of travellers and traders, while at the same time maintaining vigilance to combat the entry of contraband and cross- border crime. To achieve this goal, we have developed a number of initiatives under the Customs Action Plan to streamline the entry of pre-approved and low-risk persons and goods. This plan provides for a series of initiatives to intensify our enforcement activities against persons and businesses that are considered to be high or unknown risk.
On an ongoing basis, the CCRA conducts a comprehensive analysis to identify contraband enforcement priorities and the associated level of risk for all ports in Canada. This analysis is based on past enforcement results, intelligence information, traffic volumes and a host of other factors. The Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit and Canada Tunnel and the Sarnia Bluewater Bridge are all considered high-risk ports in the 2002 National Port Risk Assessment.
Contraband enforcement resources are allocated based on the national port risk and contraband threat assessments. The dedicated resources include Customs personnel, such as Customs inspectors, detector dog teams, regional intelligence officers and analysts, and targeting officers. We also have specialized contraband detection equipment such as IonScan and mobile X-ray technology.
There are more than 520 uniformed Customs inspectors in place in the Windsor-St. Clair Division: 360 are engaged in the processing of travellers and commercial carriers at the three large land border points; 120 are tasked with processing and verification of commercial goods importation at four commercial locations within the division; and the remaining 40 in place throughout the Division are responsible for air, marine and rail verification services. The division has 80 dedicated resources tasked with contraband enforcement and intelligence activities, including 35 flexible response team officers, 4 contraband targeters, 12 regional intelligence officers, 6 regional intelligence analysts, 10 Customs investigators and 3 detector dog teams.
In 2001, Windsor-St. Clair Division seized over $24 million in drugs: 65 kilograms of cocaine, 87 kilograms of cannabis resin, or hash oil, and 520 kilograms of marijuana. In addition to these figures, over Can. $2.6 million in suspected proceeds of crime were seized or detained by CCRA.
The division led the country in implementing the officer powers initiative, where Customs inspectors received additional powers of arrest relating to certain criminal offences, such as impaired driving, arrest warrants and possession of stolen properties. Following an intensive training program, officers from this division have encountered over 736 incidents requiring use of these new powers. This includes the arrest or interception of more than 398 impaired drivers and 122 persons with Canadian arrest warrants.
The division is actively engaged in a number of partnerships with law enforcement agencies, including formal joint forces operations such as the RCMP Integrated Proceeds of Crime Unit, the U.S. customs intelligence collection and analysis team, and the recently formed Detroit-Windsor Integrated Border Enforcement Team. On an ongoing basis, the division's intelligence and contraband unit participates in both the agency operations targeting criminal organizations and individuals involved in the illegal entry and distribution of contraband into Canada.
The Windsor-St. Clair Division is unique in that it is the only point of entry along the U.S. and Canada border where two major urban centres exist side by side. The city of Detroit has one of the highest violent crime rates in North America. The Detroit Metro Airport ranks sixth in the world for volume of international air traffic. As well, three major interstate freeways converge in Detroit linking major population centres, including the most direct route from Mexico to Canada.
On a normal day, 7,000 trucks a day enter Canada over the Ambassador Bridge and 3,000 trucks enter at the Bluewater Bridge in Sarnia. I give you those figures just to give you an idea of the numbers, volumes and challenges we encounter on a daily basis in this area.
Senator Kenny: We know you gave us a very abbreviated version compared to what you could give us. You did overlook the major crossing at Stanstead and Derby Line, where there are two major metropolitan centres that face each other.
I have had occasion to visit a number of ports or crossings from time to time, and the IonScanners and mobile X-ray equipment are presented as being important tools. I am beginning to conclude, however, they are more public relations tools than important tools. When the I look at the capacity and the time required to put an IonScan into use, or to x- ray individual boxes on a container, you will need a lot of them before you can rely on them very much. Would you agree?
Mr. Elliott: As you say, the IonScan is a tool. The onus is on the Customs inspectors themselves to do this work, and the dogs. I know they use the IonScan on a regular basis. It is simply a matter of swabbing a steering wheel, or another part, and then feeding it into the IonScan, which gives a reading.
Senator Kenny: How many false positives do you get?
Mr. Elliott: I could not give you an exact percentage. I know it gives us good indicators on a regular basis.
Senator Kenny: Twenty per cent is what we have been told.
Mr. Elliott: Yes, which is why I said it is only a tool. There are other things that can guide a Customs inspector. The IonScan is a guiding tool. In terms of the mobile X-rays, we are moving from the smaller ones to the Vasis, which will X-ray an entire container as it moves through.
Senator Kenny: How many an hour?
Mr. Elliott: It can only move through it at a rate of about five miles per hour.
Senator Kenny: In a given day, how many vehicles could you do?
Mr. Elliott: To de-stuff a trailer can take up to four hours.
Senator Kenny: Sure. So it is better than de-stuffing?
Mr. Elliott: It is much better than de-stuffing it, yes.
Senator Kenny: You are dealing with large volumes at these crossings. It is the busiest spot in Canada. It seems to me that you are short on people, short on equipment and short on space to do your work. You are facing a tremendous challenge. You are to be complimented for the job you are doing, because it is a tough job, but it seems to me you have not been given the resources and tools you need to do the job.
Mr. Elliott: We have to use risk assessment. We do not ever envision that we will be able to look at 7,000 trucks a day. Regardless of the system or equipment we put in place, we will never be able to look at 7,000 trucks a day.
Senator Kenny:. You said you had four Targeters, and how does that work out on 24/7 coverage?
Mr. Elliott: The targeter does not have to be there when the truck comes through. The targeter's work is done before the truck gets there, which is the way it should be done. The targeter is targeting loads based on the information gathered before the load arrives in Canada.
Senator Kenny: Given that you have traffic flowing through 24/7, at the volume you are talking about can four targeters actually do the analysis required to come up with an assessment on all the vehicles?
Mr. Elliott: We have found that four is sufficient. If it were not, we would put more people into it.
Senator Kenny: How did you arrive at the 3 per cent de-stuffing or back-ending?
Mr. Elliott: Three per cent?
Senator Kenny: Yes. Why is that a figure that you chose?
Mr. Elliott: I did not choose 3 per cent.
Senator Kenny: You did not, but CCRA has. Is that the appropriate percentage in your view?
Mr. Elliott: We have done random sampling. Generally, 96 per cent to 97 per cent of the people are compliant. In the Customs Action Plan, we are registering not only importers but carriers and truck drivers. There will be a lot of people captured in the CAP; therefore, we can concentrate on people who do not qualify for the pre-approved programs or are an unknown risk to us.
Senator Kenny: We have been told that the 3 per cent was not arrived at as a result of any scientific study, that it was simply budget-driven. In other words, at the end of the day there was enough dough left over for 3 per cent, and that is what caused the inspections to take place.
Mr. Elliott: Normally, the people who are working on a given day just keep examining loads. When they complete a load, they move on to the next one. Therefore, they are not thinking about percentages in the back of their minds.
Senator Kenny: No, I am sure they are not, but when we talk to people at your level or to the commissioner we area told that there is enough dough left over to allow for that. We asked whether any analysis was done to determine whether 6 per cent would work better, or 1 per cent. I understand you do not have that information.
Mr. Elliott: No, but I think a lot of that is an unknown.
Senator Kenny: It is not unknown until you do the study.
Mr. Elliott: We just keep working to do what we can on a daily basis. We do not limit ourselves to 3 per cent, nor do we put on an extra effort to reach that. We work to the resources that we have.
Senator Kenny: That is my point. Believe me, I am not being critical of you, Mr. Elliott, I am simply observing the fact that 3 per cent appears to have been arrived at without any scientific basis.
Mr. Elliott: Yes. We have a number of very specific targets. The 3 per cent one is not the only one. There are other targets we have to look at, and we have managed to meet all of them in each of the last two years. We feel we have been as efficient as we can.
Senator Kenny: If you had a choice of enhancing your operations, ranging from space, to people, to equipment, where would you put those enhancements?
Mr. Elliott: The volumes in our area do not seem to let up at all, especially the commercial volumes. Although the volume of car traffic is not at pre-September 11 volumes, truck traffic is already well above the September 11 level. It is the commercial area that we would like to address.
Infrastructure is a concern. There are infrastructure problems, not only with the bridges themselves, but infrastructure on both sides.
In the last couple of years, we have enhanced our examination facilities at all three major crossings. Things are much better than they were 10 years ago. We think that is quite good. I have always been a proponent of intelligence.
Senator Kenny: Do you have phone-in centres?
Mr. Elliott: Yes, the telephone reporting centres.
Senator Kenny: How do you police them? Suppose an individual is coming across from Grosse Pointe and wants to land somewhere between here and Sarnia. Presumably, there are phones at marinas, with signs that say, ``If you're landing here, call in.'' Would they speak with one of your officials? Would your official decide whether to ask the individual to remain there for further investigation or tell him, ``Fine, thank you, carry on''?
How do you ensure that in fact someone reaches for the phone?
Mr. Elliott: We have flexible response teams out on the road on a regular basis. That is where the term ``flexible'' comes in. They are not static at the bridges. They spend a lot of their time, especially at this time of the year, at the 108 reporting centres that we have on this 500 kilometres of shoreline. We have actually doubled the size of the flexible response teams for this summer because we are increasing the examination rates.
There are two levels of boaters. There is the CanPass boater, the individual who has pre-registered, and the non- CanPass boater. We will be examining double the number of non-CanPass boaters as we will CanPass boaters this year.
Senator Kenny: What sort of biometrics are there on the CanPass?
Mr. Elliott: The CanPass system is being revamped. I am familiar with the Nexus system in Sarnia. It is a joint system with Canada and the U.S. It is the only system left running — actually, it was suspended until December but was re-instituted. It will be going up, even for the people in Sarnia who are used to the old system, with increased enhancement including fingerprinting. That was not used under the previous Nexus. That is the same system that will be going up at the British Columbia border this month.
Senator Kenny: How many personnel do you have?
Mr. Elliott: There are 520 uniformed personnel. That is for the Windsor and St. Clair areas, and the London airport.
Senator Kenny: That is about one per kilometre?
Mr. Elliott: Yes. There are 108 reporting stations.
Senator Kenny: That is 24/7, I believe. I am concerned that you are under-resourced and understaffed. In a different scenario, I expect to be back here to have further chats with you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Elliott.
The committee adjourned.