Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Legal and
Constitutional Affairs
Issue 4 -- Evidence (Afternoon Sitting)
Upon resuming at 2:00 p.m.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we start this afternoon with two very interesting witnesses from the City of Toronto: Wade Hillier, who is the coordinator of the Mayor's Task Force on Drugs, and Dayle Mosely, Assistant to the Executive Director of the Downtown/Eastside Residents' Association from Vancouver.
We will begin with you, Mr. Hillier. Perhaps you could talk to us about this bill from the perspective of the City of Toronto. We will then hear further on the bill from the perspective of the City of Vancouver.
Mr. Wade Hillier, Coordinator, Mayor's Task Force on Drugs, City of Toronto: Mr. Chairman, I bring apologies from the Mayor of Toronto that she was unable to appear here today. The Mayor is particularly interested in this issue. She spoke yesterday at an international cities exchange with the City of Frankfurt in Toronto on the issue of substance abuse in the City of Toronto and backs my remarks to this committee a hundred per cent.
I am not here today to speak to you about the intricacies of this bill, although I am sure others have come before you for that purpose. I am certainly not in a position to discuss scheduling of drugs, but I do hope to bring to you a practical perspective on this issue from a city.
Toronto is Canada's largest city, and because of that it enjoys the privileges of a world-class city. However, it must also deal with world-class problems. Substance abuse and the problems created by it for neighbourhoods, police and individuals is one of those major problems. Over the past few years, we have seen local neighbourhoods in Toronto become plagued by open drug dealing and the criminal activity that goes along with this trade. Individuals feel under siege in their own communities and fear for their safety and that of their children.
The response to these fears has taken many forms, from resident group protests to community groups applying for grants to police crackdowns. The result is often that the issue disappears, or moves to another street. Over the past few years, it has been our experience that efforts to move drug dealers out of neighbourhoods often results in the trade moving street by street, as people are pushed out from one street to the next.
Why am I telling you this, you might ask, and what has this to do with Bill C-8? I am telling you this because I think today we are at a crossroads where we might possibly be able to make some changes to these situations. In order to do that, though, we need a multi-faceted approach that includes law enforcement, education, prevention, and harm reduction. Bill C-8 is an opportunity for you to initiate a balanced approach to dealing with drug use in this country.
We have for too long focused our efforts solely on criminalizing and incarceration of the drug dealers, and on the American approach of interdiction and waging a "war on drugs." Canada has its own drug strategy, which states that there is value in harm reduction and prevention as key to making long-term gains in reducing substance abuse. Bill C-8 does not appear to reflect that strategy. The bill appears to rely heavily on continued prohibition and increasing legal sanctions on users.
This approach does not acknowledge that a "war on drugs" approach has failed. However, it is no longer acceptable to approach the drug use issue as being merely a legal one. In cities such as Toronto, we experience all forms of substance abuse, and we now see that we must also be willing to work with all those involved in the issue of substance abuse, including drug users. We can no longer relegate them to prisons, since we can no longer afford imprisonment as the only option. This is no longer a fiscally responsible approach. Too many Canadians are tied up in the legal system on minor drug offences, costing the Canadian public millions of dollars, when we could all be better served by taking an approach that sees drug use as public health and social policy issue.
We at the City of Toronto have begun to broaden our perspective. Recently, at the City of Toronto Board of Health, a paper was brought forward entitled "Innovative Strategies in Substance Abuse, Prevention and Treatment." I should like to highlight for you a few examples of what has been tried in other major cities in other countries which have come to acknowledge that traditional approaches to substance abuse are not working. It is at the city level where drug use is felt most, and it is also where drug policy and legislation has its biggest impact. We deal with it in our neighbourhoods and communities.
I will speak first of needle exchange programs. These have played a major role in the prevention of HIV in major cities. Toronto and Vancouver were leaders in North America in developing these programs. While needle exchange programs rely heavily on syringe exchange, the provision of condoms, education and prevention are all important pieces as well. Perhaps the most controversial issue surrounding the concept of needle exchange is whether or not these services encourage drug use. Initial studies indicate that there is no evidence that needle exchange programs increase the amount of drug use of needle exchange clients, or change the overall level of drug use in communities.
The cost-effectiveness appears to be well documented in that the incidence, for example, in Toronto of HIV infection in the intravenous drug use population is approximately 7 per cent, compared to 30 to 50 per cent of infection rates in Chicago and New York. If we examine the cost of treating AIDS patients at $119,000 U.S. per patient per year versus the costs of a needle exchange program such as that run by the City of Toronto at $450,000 per year, the cost-benefit analysis is clear.
Next I want to talk about methadone programs. These programs are used to suppress the symptoms of withdrawal from drugs. Methadone's long-lasting or long-acting effects allow a person to achieve improved social stability and functioning. Methadone maintenance is in place in many countries, including Canada. Numerous studies have shown that the use of methadone has resulted in significant reductions in the morbidity and mortality of drug users, as well as decreases in levels of both criminal involvement and the spread of HIV. Regulations have been very restrictive in this country and the availability of space limited. In the U.K., Europe and Australia, methadone is available from clinics as well as from medical practitioners. In Amsterdam, Barcelona and Frankfurt, methadone is distributed by way of mobile vans. The provision of methadone to drug addicts allows them to become productive, functioning, and contributing members of society.
With regard to the prescription of illicit drugs, comprehensive approaches that include needle exchange programs, counselling, employment and housing, in conjunction with drug treatment, have been tried in places such as Merseyside in England. Doctors there have also prescribed several types of drugs in an effort to meet the needs of some users for whom methadone does not work. The prescribing of drugs is difficult to accept but appears to be working. For example, the Swiss government has undertaken a study to look at the prescription drug approach. They started in 1994 with 700 participants and expanded the program to 1,000 participants in 1995, since the preliminary results from this study are very positive.
With regard to law enforcement initiatives, the complexities on both sides of this issue remain officially unresolved. In fact, legalization of so-called hard drugs has not occurred anywhere in the world. The Merseyside experiment, however, has become an example of how all sides of the issue can work together. The Merseyside police have become national leaders in activities aimed at improving the handling of drug problems. Their police and other officials act in partnership with the regional health authority in coordinating the prevention and treatment of drug-related problems.
One of the key elements of this police support is the use of cautioning. Under this policy, an individual found using illicit drugs is taken to a police station where the drug is confiscated and the incident is recorded. The person is referred to support agencies. The intent of these policies is to avoid the prosecution and potential incarceration of drug users, rather than to deal directly with the issue of their drug use.
In the Netherlands, while drug use has not been legalized, there are some legal distinctions between drugs. Dealing or possessing small quantities of cannabis has been decriminalized. Users are not imprisoned, but rather are monitored and helped by way of a network of organizations which provide financial, social and medical assistance. Dutch officials counter that this approach helps in the elimination of the "underground" of users. In other words, there is no hidden, disenfranchised population of addicts because they are not the target of law enforcement agencies. Only big traffickers must hide. Moreover, the Dutch proudly point to national statistics which highlight extremely low levels of homicide and drug overdose deaths.
Other cities such as Frankfurt have played a central role in the introduction of measures designed to reduce the harms implicit in drug use. These undertakings eventually led to the abolishment of national paraphernalia laws in 1992 which had restricted government-sponsored needle exchange programs. As well, changes in policies regarding substance abuse are occurring in several other countries including Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland and Australia.
With regard to correction strategies, a number of programs offering substance abuse treatment as an alternative to prison operate internationally. The idea has grown more recently in popularity since a number of well-designed studies have suggested that individuals coerced into treatment, usually under the threat of criminal sanctions, do just as well as those voluntarily entering treatment.
The Delancey Street Foundation in the United States is considered one of the most successful centres offering drug treatment alternatives to prisons. Currently, about 1,000 residents are housed in five facilities in the U.S. The average resident has been a seriously dependent drug user for ten years and has been in prison four times. About 30 per cent have been homeless. During their stay at Delancey House, which is generally about four years in duration, residents receive a high school equivalency degree, as well as training in a number of marketable skills. Along with drug treatment, educational and vocational training, social and interpersonal skills are stressed.
Another strategy for coping with growing case-loads of drug-related offenders is the creation of drug courts. By selectively processing drug-related cases, these courts link defendants to community-based treatment programs in an effort to reduce drug use and drug-related harm.
I have taken the time to review some of the above examples to help illustrate that, in Canada and elsewhere, some very innovative things have been happening in this field, and we should continue that trend. Other countries have shown us what it is possible to achieve if we are willing to take some risks and explore other avenues for dealing with substance abuse. While Toronto has done some innovative work with such things as needle exchange programs and methadone, we have not taken the further steps at this point to implement such programs as those being undertaken at Merseyside.
Bill C-8 needs to provide opportunities to further some of the innovative things we are currently doing and enable us to explore new ideas. We need a piece of legislation that can deal with the hard enforcement issues of drug trafficking, but also leaves room for us to work with users and provide them with the health and social supports as mentioned herein without fear of prosecution and persecution.
We at the City of Toronto have made the necessary link between substance abuse and health and social issues. The legislation in this country now needs to allow the flexibility to pursue innovative strategies, keeping in mind that any approach taken is a balanced one involving communities, law enforcement and users.
I am glad to see that you at the Senate are taking the opportunity to hear from all of these stakeholders. I think we can all agree that criminalizing a user does not help in treatment, that public health-based alternatives are the way to go, that the high cost of current laws to individuals, community and society in general are too much, and that we need to look at other models.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Hillier.
Mr. Mosely, will you please make your presentation based on your experience in the city of Vancouver.
Mr. Dayle Mosely, Assistant to the Executive Director, Downtown/Eastside Residents Association, Vancouver: I have been working in Canada's poorest community for eight years. The residents' association is an association of the people who live in that community. We have probably the highest per capita drug use rate in Canada right now. In the last two years, I have been on the board of directors of the B.C. Coalition for Safer Communities. I am on the Interim Advisory Committee for the City of Vancouver on Safer City Initiatives. I have also been an advisor to the Attorney General on community-based policing. I sit on our local police-community liaison committee. I am also on the steering committee of the Downtown/Eastside Strathcona Coalition, which is made up of various people who are interested in the betterment of that community. I am deeply steeped in what is going on in that area of Vancouver, and in Vancouver in general.
I heard Senator Carstairs interviewed on the radio. Her perception seemed to be that although there is a drug problem, and for the people involved it is a serious situation, nevertheless it is not an overwhelming problem. That is really not true in the city of Vancouver. I cannot speak for other Canadian cities, but it is an enormous and pervasive problem in our city, especially in the neighbourhood in which I work.
The harm caused by injection drug use has been increasing worldwide with the advent of HIV. British Columbia has experienced an increase in the number of HIV positive injection drug users, as well as an increase in the number of drug-related deaths. There was also a ten-fold increase in the number of cocaine-related charges in Vancouver between 1985 and 1991. The effects of this problem are nowhere more prevalent, or more devastating, than in the downtown east side. We, who work and live in this neighbourhood, are tired of attending funerals and memorials. We want the carnage to stop.
I will give you a few statistics on the situation as well as some examples of what is going on. We have an estimated 750 HIV infections in the intravenous drug user or IDU community, as well as hepatitis A, B and C, skin and blood infections, endocarditis, tuberculosis, et cetera. Tuberculosis is running rampant through the general population in the neighbourhood as well as the drug user community. Our current estimate of the cost of treatment for each of these people is about $150,000 per person per year, and this is increasing dramatically.
In addition to the more than 300 deaths investigated by Vince Cain in his famous report, we had another recent shipment of concentrated heroin, and watched as once again our community was decimated and friends and acquaintances disappeared off the streets. We have fetal exposures to various substances with both short- and long-term consequences. It is estimated that 30 per cent of the babies born in the Downtown/Eastside area are so affected
We have increasing pressure on all community-level outreach programs - nursing, medical services, advocacy, programs and social services. Addiction is also sweeping through the mentally ill community as more and more people are forced on to the streets by hospital downsizing and discrimination in housing. As an organization, DERA operates a 70-room rooming house for the mentally ill. I would say at least 70 per cent of the residents are also intravenous drug users, as well as being HIV-positive. The mentally ill are just coming out in droves, getting involved in drugs, contracting HIV and dying.
The combination of drug use and HIV is also sweeping through our aboriginal population, who make up 25 to 30 per cent of the community. Not since the early nineteenth century have we seen such devastation of the native population by disease. Young native kids, as well as some non-natives, are turning up on our streets. The products of various types of abuse and neglect, they are quickly exposed to drugs, develop addictions, and are forced to choose between selling their bodies or stealing to maintain their habits.
In 1995, the Vancouver Police Department identified more than 450 children under the age of 16 working the streets of the Downtown/Eastside neighbourhood. The majority of them were drug users. In addition, in the last 10 years we have had more than 40 violent deaths of women who work the streets.
Current estimates are that we have as many as 15,000 intravenous drug users in Vancouver. Nobody knows the exact figure. The numbers are climbing. The needle exchange last year exchanged 1,800,000 needles in the city of Vancouver. That is the equivalent of the entire exchange in the United States. We did that amount just in the city of Vancouver.
The Vancouver Police Department has basically given up. There is really nothing they can do about the situation. Even if their entire manpower were put on this problem, they could not catch up with what is going on.
We as a community have not sat idly by and watched passively as this devastation unfolds. We formed the Downtown/Eastside Strathcona Coalition which brought together community agencies, government representatives, bureaucrats from three levels of government, the police department and interested residents to try to find solutions to the problems of the neighbourhood. The coalition also included intravenous drug users. We developed an alcohol and drug working group, which evolved into an advisory committee to the provincial alcohol and drug programs and later into the Vancouver Eastside Alcohol and Drug Association.
In addition, various combinations of residents, government and health care professionals are involved in - and here is a short list - the Maternity Care for Substance-abusing Women and Children Program; the Multiple Access Model and In-patient Working Groups; the Multi-diagnosis Working Group; the Detox Working Group; the Safe Ride Program; the Vancouver HIV-AIDS Strategic Plan; the Decriminalization Discussion Group; the Task Force on the Coroner's Recommendations; the Needle Exchange Working Group; the Point Project; the Intravenous Drug-user Working Group with St. Paul's Hospital.
The list just goes on and on. I had personally been involved in four or five of these groups. I reached burnout last year and found somebody else to take over because I could not take it any more; there was just so much going on in this area.
The entire community is focused on this problem because it permeates the entire community, and it permeates the rest of the city because this problem is not isolated to our community. This is causing break-and-enters all over Vancouver, and multiple other problems.
Besides this group participation, a vast number of studies and reports have been produced on various aspects of this situation. In preparing to come today to appear before you, I spoke with many different people in the community. I explained what was being proposed by the federal government in relation to Bill C-8, at least as well as I could understand from reading the material. Many of us are very worried. We worry over the implications for the needle exchange programs and any other such services which we might want to put in place. We are worried about the future ability to develop and implement drug replacement or provision programs on which we have been working with the medical profession, with government representatives, with community people and with drug users themselves. We are, in essence, working towards the Merseyside model which my colleague here mentioned previously.
We worry that this Bill C-8 will ensure the maintenance of the horrendous status quo. This bill is not going anywhere new. It is just entrenching what already exists. We fear that if this bill is passed, no matter how it is amended, then no one will look at this problem again for a further 20 years. We need some really creative solutions right now. We need room to move in whatever direction we can to keep people from dying from this plague which is sweeping our community.
Let me tell you about the irony of this situation. DERA opened up a neighbourhood safety office through which we are working on all kinds of programs to increase the safety levels in our community. The Vancouver Police Department constable who is assigned to work with us full time has told me that he was informed by Crown counsel last week, as was the entire department, that they would no longer accept charges for simple possession of any drug in the city of Vancouver. Basically, they no longer have the time to prosecute these cases. This situation is just nuts. Here we are, putting into place a law which increases penalties for some of these drugs, when the system cannot even get to the charges.
The problem is that both the current and the proposed legislation are themselves part of the problem. Women in our community will not access alcohol and drug services because what they are doing is illegal, and they fear having their children apprehended. We would like to set up safe shooting sites similar to the ones in Europe, to minimize harm to users and to involve medical staff. We would like to try pilot projects with the medically-supervised provision of heroin and cocaine to registered addicts.
There is one point I want to make: Easier access to methadone will not solve all of the problems. First of all, a number of the heroin users for whom the program was designed will not become involved in it. Second, our biggest problem with serial conversion in relation to HIV is with the cocaine-using population. There is nothing in this legislation, or in the current health care system, that will take care of that problem. People are dying from this.
It almost seems like the problems are outstripping our ability to come up with solutions. It is just not right to enact another law which may possibly hinder us in solving these problems. This bill says a great deal about what people cannot do. We need to start from scratch. We need to consult and draft a made-in-Canada drug policy. Only then can we draft legislation which makes sense. Some of the worry seems to stem from the fear of being ahead of public opinion.
In Vancouver, the harm reduction approach is supported by just about anybody I have ever run into, including health care professionals, the schools, parents, police, social service workers, lawyers and community agencies. I cannot think of anyone, other than a few people out in the valley who go to church a lot, who are not really worried about doing something to help people from dying from drugs. The perception of great resistance in Canada is probably false.
I was reading some of the transcripts from the Addiction Research Foundation witnesses. They said that we need a large education process. We have been doing that in Vancouver. We do not push our drug users from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in that city. We are trying to deal with what is happening within our own neighbourhood. We have undertaken that educational process, and gone beyond that. I do not see that problem in Vancouver. Maybe there are other parts of Canada that have not experienced the same problems, and have not bothered to look into the situation, and which still need that education.
Laws are being drafted for the general population in Canada. The people at the very low end of the stick lose out because they fall within a special-case scenario. Perhaps Vancouver is different from the rest of Canada, I do not know. I am worried that this law will make it harder for us to do our jobs.
Senator Gigantès: Both of you listed a number of things which could be part of a better solution. Both of you said that this bill, like the existing legislation, would only make your jobs harder. Mr. Mosely said that, in Vancouver, the police will not bother laying charges any more, because they just cannot cope.
Mr. Mosely: The police will not, and neither will Crown counsel.
Senator Gigantès: Let me ask both of you to hypothesize. What would happen if we treated all drugs the way we treat alcohol? We have a liquor control board. Why could we not have a drug control board where people could get the drugs they need? In other words, we could decriminalize them all and see what happens.
Mr. Mosely: I think the way we treat alcohol is wrong. When you are dealing with drugs such as cocaine and heroin, which have much higher addictive properties, that is not a solution either. There must be medical intervention in the process. It must be controlled. Someone should not be able to automatically gain access to drugs. No, I do not think that is right for our society.
Senator Gigantès: Under medical supervision, would it not at least take away from the criminals the profits they make from selling drugs; profits which allow them to corrupt society?
Mr. Mosely: It would be ideal to have a situation where children did not grow up abused; it would be ideal if everyone had access to education by the time they were grown up; it would be ideal if parents did a proper job in raising their kids. If all of those situations were the case, we would not have any problems. However, there are many other problems within this problem.
I am not saying that the Senate or the House of Commons should consider decriminalizing the possession of drugs, or even decriminalizing the possession of marihuana. Marihuana is a different story, and I do not want to touch it. Let us not talk about it. I find this legislation on the subject of marihuana incredible. It is insane. If this legislation passes, we must be careful about the penalties for simple possession. I would be happy to see a fining system in place for the carrying around of most of these drugs. However, I think that traffickers should be stomped on as hard as possible. I fully agree with those clauses in this bill. That is no problem.
When the regulations come down, I do not have any faith that they will be what we need them to be in order to do the job in the community. That stuff must be included in the bill. The bill must be drafted so that treatment and prevention are part of the solution. This bill does not look to me like a health bill in any way, shape or form. It looks to me like a very simple punishment bill.
The European model is interesting. They have a program to provide free heroin to people. I think they charge five francs a week with which an addict might obtain heroin. On that program, they will only take someone who has been a drug addict for at least two years; they will only take someone who has already failed on regular drug treatment programs and has already failed on a methadone replacement program. Only then will they provide an addict with heroin, not in an injectable form, but in a cigarette form. That makes the addicts happy, and crime rates go down. Good benefits come out of it. We should try some of those experiments here in Canada and start moving towards the 21st century, rather than stay in the 1920s.
Senator Gigantès: What was the public reaction in those European countries to such progressive methods?
Mr. Mosely: Probably the same reaction we had in Vancouver when we first brought out the needle exchange program. There was a great deal of misinformation, and a lot of reaction. We had our medical health officer come out and say, "Look, this makes sense to me." We had the support of our mayor. He was from a fairly conservative political party. He came out and said, "Look, this makes sense to me." If we get a broad scale of support from important figures, then that negative reaction goes away.
I do not know what happened in Europe. I barely managed to obtain copies of what they are doing over there. That is another problem. There is no central place we can apply to here in Canada to obtain information on what works in other countries. We had to find some doctor at Simon Fraser University, and then apply through them in order to obtain some information on that.
Mr. Hillier: We had discussions yesterday with representatives from Frankfurt with respect to their initiatives, which are quite progressive in Germany. They are out on a limb because the rest of the Federal Republic of Germany does not necessarily support all of the things that are happening in Frankfurt. One of the interesting things they did was to hold community meetings in the main subway rail station. They set out 500 chairs, and as people passed by outside of the station, or got off the trains, they would sit down and listen. It was a case of "Frankfurt meets the drug-using community". Eventually this grew, and they had a second meeting.
You are right. The initial reaction is probably negative, but it is only by example that things start to change. That is one of the things we deal with in Toronto. Often the day-to-day realities of people living in communities and dealing with substance abuse on their streets, or outside their doors, come to the attention of city council or the government. We must address that issue as it arises, but we must see beyond that perspective and hold out until other solutions make sense. In European countries, there have been problems in terms of public acceptance, but that acceptance has grown. People have begun to understand that there are different approaches.
Senator Jessiman: I do not know if either one of you had an opportunity to read the Globe and Mail today, and in particular a column about Frankfurt.
Mr. Hillier: I heard about it, but I did not read it.
Senator Jessiman: It is very interesting. It talks about health rooms. The author says that the result of what they are doing is complete elimination of the open-air drug market that formerly blighted the downtown, a 40 per cent reduction in street robbery and robberies from cars, and a reduction in the number of drug-related emergency calls from three a day to two a week.
Did you meet the two gentlemen, the deputy chief of police and the senior prosecutor from the Frankfurt regional court?
Mr. Hillier: Yes.
Senator Jessiman: It is interesting that he is a doctor. Is he a medical doctor?
Mr. Hillier: I am not sure. Actually, we had breakfast with them on Tuesday morning and talked with them about the strategy and how that came about. They have their weekly Monday meeting. The four gentlemen who were in Toronto meet every Monday morning for a couple of hours and brainstorm on the situation.
Senator Jessiman: How long has that been in existence?
Mr. Hillier: I think since 1989.
Senator Jessiman: Seven-plus years.
I want to get back to the marihuana matter. I assume from your remarks that you think marihuana really is no worse than alcohol.
Mr. Mosely: I think it is much less worse than alcohol.
Mr. Hillier: We raised the question of marihuana with the Frankfurt people, but they would not discuss it because to them it is a non-issue. I feel that alcohol presents many more social problems than marihuana does. However, this is not an issue about which is worse because the abuse of substances creates problems. I do not think weighing their value in those terms makes sense. It depends on the person and the situation.
Senator Jessiman: Before I sat on this committee and began to read this material, my perception was that if you started to smoke marihuana, you went on to hashish, coke and heroin. I take it from what you are saying that your view is that everyone who drinks alcohol does not become an alcoholic.
Mr. Mosely: No.
Senator Jessiman: I assume that for someone who smokes marihuana, the likelihood of them moving up to the next step is the same.
Mr. Mosely: If they have an addictive personality, they can start on milk and move on to heroin. The type of personality and the experiences they had up to the age of six pretty much sets the pattern for how the rest of their life will go.
Senator Pearson: You are obviously very well plugged in to your community, which makes your arguments and your presentations persuasive. I would be interested in knowing the degree to which the drug users themselves are involved in helping to find the solutions.
Mr. Mosely: I was hoping to be able to talk about that, actually. We have a group in Vancouver called IV Feed, which is set up and run by drug users. They have set themselves up with a drop-in centre where like individuals can get information about health care. A food bank is also being run out of that centre. The whole setup is run by drug users, and it is very new; it has only been in existence for approximately the last four months or so. However, they are having a terrible time trying to get funding. They cannot get funding from health or alcohol or drug programs. The only source of funding has been the Ministry of Social Services, which is being very creative with funding in Vancouver, and I must praise them.
Senator Nolin: Try the church.
Mr. Mosely: Church groups are all actively involved in that community, but when it comes to dealing with drug users, they tend not to want to get involved.
The other point is that these users want to do this themselves. They are only looking for some money to open up a space where they can set up a drop-in centre in which to run their program. One of the first projects they are considering is as the result of a suggestion by the head of our needle exchange program, John Turvey, who said, "Why not set up a project whereby drug users would go around cleaning up used needles, condoms and wrappers around the community?" They think this is a good idea, and it looks like they will be doing it.
One of the things we want to do is change the public perception of who these people are. Right now, I know people who are on methadone maintenance, and others who have nipped in and out of heroin addiction. I know just about any kind of drug user you can imagine. They are a vital part of our community, as well as being drug addicted. A lot of them care. There are some who are just on a downward slide, and there is nothing that can be done with them for now.
The other side of this situation is that you cannot force people to solve their own problems. We hope that this program will help in that respect, because they speak the same language as their prospective customers, and what they have to say will be given a lot more credibility. There is a lot of distrust within the drug-using community because of the fact that the trade in drugs is illegal, so it is hard to get a handle on users. Thus there is a real potential for this group to develop some good programs if they are given support.
We have them paired up with existing programs in the community right now, under which we do the administration of their funding. We take care of making sure that the funds go where they are supposed to go, but they are running the program themselves. When they opened up their doors, they were having problems with people coming in and using their facility as a shooting site, and people trying to coerce others into giving them drugs, and so on, but they have managed to police that situation themselves, and those types of activity seem not to be happening any longer in their centre.
The original idea in setting up this group was aimed at eventually setting up a safe shooting site, but that is hard to do under the current legislation, and I do not see anything in this bill that will change that situation. No matter what we do, we always seem to have to say, "Gosh, if only we did not have the Criminal Code in our way."
There are also all kinds of problems with the sex trade workers. It is an awful situation right now.
Senator Milne: Mr. Hillier, you are on the mayor's drug task force in Toronto. We have been hearing some very persuasive arguments about decriminalizing the use of marihuana. What would this do to your programs? You were describing that you have high drug use areas, and that the people who live in those areas get really upset, and the police get involved and manage to move the problem out to the next block. How would decriminalizing marihuana make any difference to that, or would it?
Mr. Hillier: I do not think the answer is necessarily in decriminalizing marihuana. The answer is in the approach which is taken and the alternatives which are provided. Decriminalizing is only one piece of any strategy. The reality is that you must involve users and community groups in any decisions around these problems because the pressure still comes from the local residents who are furious, or feel completely unsafe, because of substance abuse in their neighbourhood.
One of the major issues that we are dealing with in the city of Toronto is crack cocaine use. I am not speaking on behalf of the mayor, or taking the words out of her mouth, but one of the concerns that I hear when I listen to her is that we do not have a handle on the crack cocaine issue, which involves a lot more violence and a lot of unpredictability in terms of the user. We need to find ways to work with this community. If we push this activity out of our communities and criminalize it, that will not increase our understanding of the habit, or how to deal with it.
Senator Milne: Mr. Mosely, you describe a horrendous situation in one of our major Canadian cities.
Mr. Mosely: It is horrendous. It is really bad.
Senator Milne: I wonder what we can do in this committee. We would appear to have three choices here in this committee: we can pass this bill as it is, we can amend it, or we can defeat it and send it back to the Senate. I do not see that any of those choices would help in any way whatsoever to solve any of the problems that you have mentioned. What would you suggest?
Mr. Mosely: I realize your dilemma because I have seen this same thought expressed in the transcripts from previous deliberations here. You have been asking almost everyone who has come before you what you should be doing. I do not know that I have any more of an answer.
I am not at all well-versed on how the federal government works. My gut reaction would be that this bill should be defeated, but that some really strong recommendations should be made. I am not saying that the current Narcotic Control Act and Food and Drug Act do not need to be revamped. However, without carefully thinking through the passage of this bill, I am worried that this situation will just perpetuate for another 20 years.
We need to send a strong message to everyone concerned that this situation needs some serious thought. It is not something that we can ignore because we are afraid of public opinion or other things. It has major implications directly on peoples' ability to live in this country, and our ability to survive as a community.
The situation is really awful. I do not see that any amount of amending will do this bill any good. Passing it will not do anyone any good, and amending it and sending it back will not solve the problems that I think many of the witnesses who have been before this committee have had with this bill. It needs to be reconsidered; our whole drug strategy needs to be reconsidered.
The Chairman: Mr. Hillier, do you have any comments on that?
Mr. Hillier: We need to take an independent approach to this situation. We must talk to people across the country. Let us invite people around this table, and other tables in Ottawa, to come to the various cities and see how our programs are working and how legislation affects large cities.
I had the opportunity to speak with Allan Rock recently at a meeting in Toronto. One of the things that he was talking about was the pressure that comes from smaller communities across the country which only think about this issue in theoretical terms and are highly influenced by the mass media. We know how effective the media are at playing up isolated incidents with relation to drugs ravaging the country.
However, it is in the larger cities where we will need to be innovative and deal with this problem head-on. That is where we will have our problems. People must understand that the media have been very influential at creating an atmosphere of fear by suggesting that things are out of control, and that drugs will be the demise of our society. I do not think that picture is accurate.
Senator Doyle: A moment ago, someone said that the government had obviously devoted a lot of time to this particular piece of legislation. You are telling us that we should slow down now and give this thing some serious thought. I wonder what you think we have been doing. This was identified as a rather serious problem by Mr. Justice LeDain 20-odd years ago, and we have all been waiting for the other shoe to drop since then.
Tell me something, both of you, from your particular viewpoints: While this serious thought was being given to this piece of legislation we have here today, were you contacted by any of the organizations for which you work? Was their advice sought?
Mr. Mosely: I do not know if anyone was contacted on the original legislation.
Senator Doyle: This just came out in the bill?
Mr. Mosely: I first heard about this legislation about six months ago, and started to get some intimation on what was being proposed. I was appalled. Some of it was mis-information, I must admit, but I am still shocked at what has been going on.
I have done things before, too, where I think I know what is going on in a situation and I make what I think are well-informed decisions about it. I then sit down and start to talk to some people who are involved. The things that I have learned in the last eight years from drug users, prostitutes and other people are mind boggling. I would never have thought of those situations if I had not bothered to immerse myself in them.
If anyone in the country is drafting drug legislation, I would like them to come to Vancouver and sit down with a number of people whom I could pull together to talk about what is going on in that city beyond what I could present here. I am not the best spokesperson on this issue. I was the fourth or fifth person on the list to come here. There are other people who are more immersed in this situation who should come ahead of me.
More than likely, the drafters would not have a true understanding of not only what is going on but also what people have already talked about in terms of solutions.
Senator Doyle: And in Toronto?
Mr. Hillier: My understanding is that Toronto as a city has not been consulted - that is, not that I am aware of - about this piece of legislation. I first spoke to this piece of legislation two years ago in another role, working for the public health department in the City of Toronto. At that point as well, it was a complete surprise. I happened to sort of pounce upon it in the media and ask that the health department take a position on it. It sort of grew out of that. No one officially knew that it was happening at the time. It certainly was a surprise to us as well.
Senator Doyle: Have you talked to any of the authors, the people who put it together?
Mr. Mosely: No.
Mr. Hillier: No.
Senator Doyle: They have not sought you out?
Mr. Hillier: No.
Mr. Mosely: No.
Senator Doyle: Do you have any idea why you are being totally ignored?
Mr. Mosely: I was shocked to see that the bill had already been passed by the House of Commons, frankly. I thought there was to be some debate on this bill. However, when I looked into the situation, it seemed as if it all happened on March 6, first reading, second reading, third reading, boom.
The Chairman: Just to clarify that, the bill was passed in its previous reincarnation after committee stage in the House of Commons. It came to us as Bill C-8 after only one day in the House of Commons, but in its incarnation as Bill C-7, it had gone through all of the processes of the House of Commons.
Mr. Mosely: Specifically dealing with Vancouver, our member of Parliament is Anna Terrana. I love Anna, and we work well together, but Anna is a rookie MP. I have accompanied Anna on tours around our neighbourhood, where she has been totally shocked and appalled at what is happening. I have accompanied her on tours with her Ottawa staff. We pass information back and forth, but she is just learning. If the MP for the area is not fully aware of what is going on in her riding, how can the rest of the government know what is going on?
Senator Doyle: I was curious about what has happened to the people in the narcotics branch, the civil servants to whom this problem must be a great and continuing crisis.
Mr. Mosely: We have never been contacted by the Ministry of Justice over this at all.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: I find your experiences quite revealing. I come from Montreal and your testimony also applies to that city.
Given your experience in the field, particularly in your case in Vancouver, you are really very close to the problem that users as well as the local authorities involved contend with daily. How do you feel about the job provincial authorities are doing? To my knowledge, they still have a role to play in the health field. This bill concerns the health of Canadians. What role do provincial organizations play?
[English]
Mr. Mosely: I will try to be nice.
Senator Nolin: No, be frank.
Mr. Mosely: We are in the middle of reorganizing our entire health system right now. The Vancouver Eastside Alcohol and Drug Advice Association, which we developed and which involves many people from our community, cannot do anything right now. The decriminalization model material on which we wanted to work and discuss with the medical profession, and do some other things, is all on hold because the Vancouver Health Board is just starting to get rolling. Everything is on hold. Alcohol and drug services has basically not done anything new in quite a while now.
Senator Nolin: That is all provincial?
Mr. Mosely: Yes. As a community, we got a bit of money, approximately $20,000, from the provincial government approximately two or three years ago. We told them, "We want to sit down and figure out what is wrong with our alcohol and drug services delivery of treatments now." We set up different focus groups in our neighbourhood, and we sat down as a group and discussed who might be having a problem accessing drug and alcohol services.
We then talked to single moms, native people, and people who have mental illnesses as well as drug problems. We talked to approximately seven different focus groups at the time, one of which groups was people who are French unilingual. We found that basically the current alcohol and drug treatment programs that we have are totally inadequate, and these are mostly focused on alcohol anyway. They basically serve middle-aged men. That is basically what we have right now, and it is so behind the times that it is unbelievable.
As a community, we set up a youth detoxification program. This program is unique in a number of ways. First, it is partially directed by the kids who use the service. Second, it does not use a religious model for counsel and treatment. Third, it is a mobile program; it is not institutionalized. We not have a building where people go through the program and then leave the building. It is mobile in the sense that if that person needs to be detoxified, or "detoxed" in their home with their family, that is where that can happen. If they want to do it in a hotel room, that is where it happens. If they want to do it at a friend's house, that is alright, too. We try to make it as accessible and comfortable as we can for people to do what they need.
The problem is that, after that, there is no follow-up in terms of counselling, job training, and being able to get them decent housing, which is a problem no matter what we do in that neighbourhood, and the fact that the federal government has abdicated its responsibility for social housing programming is a real pain in the butt.
That is one of the things that we tried to develop in our community, or one part of it. We are working on the kids in the sense that that is our future. We need a healing centre for native people in our community. We need creative programs. We need multiple access so that people can have a choice of how they will get involved in their alcohol or drug treatment program; so that they can look at a number of solution and choose the one that is right for them.
Right now, we have a bunch of old and tired systems, most of them run by religious organizations, that do not have what is needed to get the job done.
[Translation]
I would be interested in hearing what Mr. Hillier has to say about this subject because both of you referred - and Mr. Hillier a little more - to the need for a strategy "on drugs" rather than one "against drugs"...
[English]
Those small words are important.
Do you not believe that there may be too many jurisdictions dealing with this problem with no coordination of efforts, if there are efforts? The federal government, in its capacity as the ruler of what is penal and what is not, should be part of that. Do you not believe that various doors should be knocked on to ensure that there will be a strategy on drugs?
Mr. Hillier: I agree. Any strategy requires multiple levels of involvement. In Toronto, for example, we have two levels of municipal government plus the provincial and federal levels, so we have four levels of bureaucracy. Things can be lost in that system and the system itself is unwieldily to start with. Trying to respond to issues like drug use and AIDS in this country is difficult because of all the levels of government. Because we are so regionalized in our experiences, the issue becomes more complicated when trying to represent a Canadian picture. Your view depends on who your constituency is or on who has the loudest voice. It becomes very difficult.
A strategy must be multifaceted and meet the needs of different jurisdictions. The needs in the city of Toronto are different from those in northern Saskatchewan. The sensibilities, the political correctness and the willingness of communities to swallow certain things are different in different parts of the country, which tends to complicate things. When provincial governments are involved, they are responding to regional differences as well. To devise a made-in-Canada drug strategy will not be simple because of the different players at the table and the different needs in different areas of country. There is not a simple solution.
Senator Nolin: We know that the solution is not simple, but is there at least something moving out there?
Mr. Hillier: From which level?
Senator Nolin: Wherever. Do you feel that there is a start of a strategy somewhere?
Mr. Hillier: I hope so. I think so.
Senator Nolin: You hope?
Mr. Mosely: As I was getting on the plane to come here I received a draft of something which the Vancouver health department is putting together for our Vancouver health board, which is subject to provincial legislation. This is their idea of what a coordinated effort should be for an intravenous drug user strategy for the city of Vancouver. So people are working on it, slowly but surely.
Senator Nolin: There are probably too many people working in isolation without talking to each other. We are now asked to look at the penal side of this issue; to say "yes" or "no" or to amend, when possible, to make it better. We all agree that there is a big problem; but we have been asked to look at Bill C-8, which is -
[Translation]
Even though it is sponsored by Health Canada, the fact remains that it is a criminal law. I most certainly disagree with some of the bill's provisions. However, others deserve to be highlighted, maintained and even improved upon, if possible.
[English]
Mr. Mosely: The chief of police of Vancouver has said that drugs should not be part of the penal system; that it needs to be treated as a health problem. The medical association in B.C. has said that as well. Everyone in B.C. currently agrees that it is not the business of the court system; it is a health problem.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: What steps should we take to adopt a harder line, as you recommended earlier, against drug traffickers?
[English]
Mr. Mosely: That is a different section of this.
Senator Nolin: I know, but it is an important point.
Mr. Mosely: We have to deal with trafficking. The problem in dealing with this is that we are always dealing with what can probably be done and what would ideally be done. Ideally, I would like to see the entire problem of drugs put in the hands of the health department which could regulate it and impose whatever penalties are necessary. Currently, if a doctor misprescribes he or she can be charged and removed from the medical profession. That would be the ideal situation but that will not happen. However, if we can recraft this in order that it will not stop us from doing what we need to do to save some lives, that will satisfy me.
Senator Nolin: I understand.
Senator Beaudoin: I should like to come back to an interesting question. The criminal aspect is obviously federal. There is no doubt in my mind that those who are involved in trafficking should come under the Criminal Code. However, the suggestion of referring to the provinces for some remedies or treatment is another question. This, in my opinion, is provincial. Even the administration of justice is provincial.
In that sense, at first I was going to say that it is perhaps difficult to have a solution when there is such a division between Ottawa and the provinces in that field, but perhaps in practice we should take some advantage of this. Obviously, the provinces should be involved in the treatment of drugs to a certain extent, because it is a question of health. If you decriminalize certain aspects of this issue, I think the provinces should be involved. The provinces are already involved in the treatment of those who are under the influence of drugs, et cetera.
Do you think that we should change that or do you think that some areas should be decriminalized and some left as they are; namely, the division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces?
Mr. Mosely: I do not know. In my work for the city I deal with the province on a number of issues, health being only one of them. Many times we are told, "We cannot do that because the Criminal Code says we cannot." Even with regard to policing matters in Vancouver, when we want to try out some new ways of doing things, we sometimes cannot because the Criminal Code says we cannot.
As an example, we wanted to set up a cooperative for women who were working the streets so that they could run their own place and be safe, because they are dying on the streets. We cannot do that because the Criminal Code is in the way. Much the same thing happens with this.
That is the problem when dealing with the province and the city. You are always dealing on those two levels. We always have to lobby to change the Criminal Code to be able to do what we want to do. I would rather that we sit down and determine what we need to do. I am not opposed to having the medical profession run it, but the medical profession must be free to decide whether they can prescribe heroin or cocaine.
Senator Beaudoin: If it is in the Criminal Code the consequence is that the provinces must administer the Criminal Code. I do not see why a municipality or a province cannot be brought into the picture in such a case.
Mr. Mosely: It should go right down to the community level.
Senator Beaudoin: Why should all of this be left to the federal authority?
Mr. Mosely: It should come down to a community level. The drug users on our streets should also be involved. The people running the needle exchanges should be involved, as should those at the Vancouver health department and those involved in provincial alcohol and drug strategies. Health Canada and anyone else who can help should also be involved. We must consider this.
Senator Gigantès: As a supplementary question, if we "provincialize" the problem to get closer to the problem, would not the premier of a certain province, who shall remain nameless, introduce measures which are so draconian that all drug users would move to other provinces where measures are not quite so draconian?
Mr. Mosely: It may happen. We are experiencing that in social services. We just live with it. My agency is directly impacted by those measures.
Mr. Hillier: By way of example, we tried to get a pilot project off the ground for first-time marihuana offenders. Last year we wrote to the federal government asking for permission to start a trial project. Eventually we received a response informing us that this was a provincial responsibility.
We have also talked to the province but we have had no response. In three weeks' time, the Crown Attorney and someone from Justice Canada will speak to us about the potential of starting an alternative diversion program for first-time offenders of laws relating to marihuana. This pushing back and forth of responsibility has gone on for approximately 18 months at this point. A group set up to deal with a diversion program, but they no longer meet because there was no reason to do so until we got some clarification.
We are close to that point now but it has been a push-and-pull situation. This is a perfect example of a city that wants to take on some responsibility but there is no agreement from the federal and provincial levels on how that should be done.
Senator Gigantès: You were actually offering to take a problem off their hands and they would not agree.
Mr. Hillier: Yes.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: I attended the national caucus in Vancouver. We met with representatives of your association. I wish you the best of luck. You are extremely courageous. Two amendments are being proposed to the bill now before the committee: the first would decriminalize marihuana, while the second, the one which you advocate, calls for a more humanitarian approach to global treatment programs.
[English]
Drug treatment programs or alternatives which you have mentioned coming from Frankfurt.
I know that the second issue seems to you to be the most important. It is the one that would get to the root of the problem. However, public opinion would be more affected by the first one which would then destroy our second one.
Since we know that public opinion will react to that or at least some members of the opposition will, should we lean towards better drug treatment programs, health programs or social programs and forget about decriminalizing marihuana?
Mr. Hillier: I must clarify. I am not necessarily advocating decriminalizing marihuana. I have just made reference to that fact.
Senator Losier-Cool: It was not your main argument.
Mr. Hillier: No, it was not. We must look at the whole issue of treatment and policies which allow for alternative or experimental programs that can focus on the best solution available. For cocaine and crack users, for example, we need to experiment on their treatment and find alternatives. However, when a problem arises or something goes wrong, public opinion will shift very quickly. Someone may die and some new problems may arise.
Still, we need some flexibility to work on solutions. Local municipalities should be able to work things out within the programs. A diversion program for first-time offenders for marihuana may not go over well in some areas of the City of Toronto, but there is a commitment to looking at it as a possible alternative. There will be fallout, but we need the opportunity to go through that experience. Perhaps we will have to deal with the fallout. We cannot always anticipate the response, but we need the opportunity to experiment.
Senator Losier-Cool: That goes to Senator Nolin's comments on punitive or criminalizing action. Should drug use be viewed as a health problem rather than as crime?
Mr. Hillier: Yes. The focus should be on health and social issues. You cannot extricate the fact that criminal elements are involved in the drug trade and in drug use. There is a criminal element. There is so much fallout from drug use such as break-and-enters. Crime in communities is related to drug use.
Mr. Mosely: We have had 40 new pawn shops open up within a six-block radius, all to service the drug trade. In fact, it has become one-stop shopping. You bring in your VCR not to get money to go buy drugs; you just get the drugs.
Senator Losier-Cool: I read that in the paper. It was easier to get drugs than to get pizza.
Mr. Mosely: Yes. It is a 24-hour operation. It is just insane.
Senator Bryden: I cannot help but be very sympathetic to a great deal of what we have heard today and certainly to what I hear from both of you. It is no revelation, though, that governments at all levels are dealing with limited resources and limited willingness on the part of the citizens to continue to pay.
Politicians and governments at all levels - and perhaps this also relates to the citizen - will be faced with choices. It is not really a matter of being able to spend more resources in total. It is a matter of allocation and reallocation of resources.
Up until now, there has been a propensity on the part of governments to grasp at things which will solve their problems at less cost to them and, therefore, will not increase costs to taxpayers. It is my understanding that the most costly way, in the short-term, to deal with drug offences is to put those people through the criminal justice system and lock them up to get them off the streets. Is that correct?
Mr. Hillier: I would think so.
Mr. Mosely: If you were to set out to try to find the most expensive way to deal with this problem, I do not know if you could come up with anything more expensive than the current system. I am not only referring to the criminal justice system, I include the health care system. If we let this go on, HIV will bankrupt this country. It will not stay with the drug community. Some people say, "It's okay; it's just the gays" or "It's okay; it's just the drug users." AIDS will get through to everyone. It will run rampant.
The level of sexual involvement of our teenagers right now is way above what it was during the 1960s and the 1970s. HIV will go through our teen community and our whole community. We must get a handle on this problem or it will kill us as a society. It will cost us a fortune.
Senator Bryden: In the last three or four years, we have seen a dramatic change in the health care system in the provinces. Hospitals have been closed; wards have been shut down. There are now community hospitals and "telenurses". This is a revolutionary approach to providing health care. There is an indication that what will result is a lower-cost system and better health care.
Mr. Mosely: We are hoping that will be the case.
Senator Doyle: Who said so?
Senator Bryden: Take my word for it, Senator Doyle. That certainly appears to be what is happening in the province of New Brunswick. For reasons that I do not know, but not necessarily all altruistic, the province of New Brunswick has taken an innovative step again in announcing last week that not only are they not going ahead with the building of a new jail, they are closing four jails. What made me think of that is the reference to the diversion program. They are basically saying that we must find a better way to deal with these offenders - not only drugs offenders but those who commit other minor offences - than the expensive way we do it now. If we could develop programs which divert minor offenders into less costly systems, perhaps we could give a dividend to the provincial government. They could then reduce their deficit with 50 per cent of the savings, and 50 per cent could go into the creation of new programs. My question is more a suggestion. If the programs you are advocating are better for the community and more cost effective, you might be successful in getting the programs you are after because of the cost dividend for the provinces.
Mr. Hillier: The vast majority of people in Canadian prisons for under two years are there for drug-related offences. They sit in jails in many of our provinces. Surely there is a better way of handling that. If we look at the cost per inmate, per year, there should be room to consider alternatives.
The problem becomes the allocation of funds between ministries and within different government bodies. It is the difference between what we value as being important or real services versus what is perceived as the quasi-soft, wishy-washy, social service approach. It is often seen to be ineffective because you do not get direct results the way you might by taking someone off the street and putting them in jail. That kind of education still needs to happen. People who make decisions must understand that the results are not as immediate as a sweep by police. There is not that kind of immediacy, but the long-term investment will, hopefully, pay off. However, it is difficult for elected politicians and officials to see that. We get into long and difficult debates. However, in terms of long-term payoff, you are right.
Senator Bryden: In recognizing the fact that Canada's population is a small percentage of the North American population and that our neighbour to the south takes a zero-tolerance policy on drugs, is there a danger that the more humanitarian we become in Canada with respect to our flexible treatments, provisions, fines and punishments, we could become a drug-users' haven in North America?
Mr. Mosely: That actually happened in the Netherlands. When they first set up, they ran a "needle park" and opened it up to everyone. After one-and-a-half years, they found that only 10 per cent of the people who were taking advantage of this program were from the Netherlands. People from all over Europe travelled there. That is why it must be thought out, regulated and controlled. You must go through a number of steps before you get involved. You should not make it easy for people.
I am not an expert in this area. I would want to talk to Neil Boyd at Simon Fraser and a number of others before I even open my mouth on this issue.
Mr. Hillier: You will see a rise with any initial change in the law or the restrictions on drug use. People want to try anything that is new or take risks. However, eventually you see a levelling off. We might experience that in this case as well. Generally, substance abuse is not the only reason people might leave their country or home. They would be able to abuse substances no matter where they lived. It may be easier to do here, but you would probably see a rise and then a fall in terms of the interest in this country as it relates to drug use.
The Chairman: Senator Milne indicated three things that this committee can do. First, we can toss the bill out altogether. Senators are very reluctant to do that for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that we are not elected. That is not generally considered to be one of those options. Second, we can amend the bill in a number of ways. Third, we can accept the bill as it is.
Putting aside amendments to "substance" at the moment, do you think it would be the least bit useful to have an opening statement of principle in the bill indicating that the purpose of all drug policies in Canada should focus on harm reduction?
Mr. Hillier: With the hope of achieving what?
The Chairman: With the hope of focusing any rules and regulations that generate from the legislation and relate to the overriding principle of the legislation.
Mr. Hillier: I think that would be of value. I do not know in reality what that would do to this legislation in terms of how it would change things. Philosophical statements have a certain value. We already have a drug strategy in Canada which talks about harm reduction. What we have before us is legislation which does not reflect harm reduction. I am not sure that would do it.
Senator Gigantès: If this bill is punitive, it is not dealing with harm reduction. Could we draft a preamble or a commentary indicating that we should focus on harm reduction, and then pass the bill?
The Chairman: No, I did not indicate what other amendments we might consider, Senator Gigantès. I was focusing only on a framework.
Thank you both very much. You have been extremely helpful in our discussion and debate on this particular legislation.
Honourable senators, our next witnesses this afternoon are representatives of our aboriginal people. We have with us the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Ovide Mercredi. He will be joined by a number of elders and people who come from the health commissions of our aboriginal people.
Chief Ovide Mercredi is known to all of us here. Chief, I know that you were to be joined by Randy Bottle, who is a member of the Alberta Health Commission, and Rufus Goodstriker, who is an elder within the aboriginal community.
Mr. Ovide Mercredi, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations: He is with the Blood Tribe of Alberta, Madam Chairman.
The Chairman: As well, you have with you Mr. Frank Shawbadees who is from Saugeen 29 First Nation and who is also an elder.
I do not know if Keith Conn has joined you at the table or not. We would be happy to have him here. He is Director of Health, Assembly of First Nations.
Mr. Mercredi: He is here to provide moral support.
The Chairman: Chief Mercredi, I gather that you will make a presentation. The others may add to the comments that you will make.
Mr. Mercredi: That is correct.
Good afternoon, members of the committee. I wish to set the context of my presentation in a bit of history.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the people of the First Nations were healthy. They enjoyed a rigorous lifestyle and a nutritious diet. The settlers carried unknown communicable diseases to North America which devastated many of our communities. These diseases, especially smallpox, measles and influenza began a decline in community health.
Centuries of colonialism, oppression and indifference in terms of health policies for our people have resulted in aboriginal people having the poorest health status in this country - in fact, in the Americas. This is a condition familiar to all indigenous peoples in Central and South America, as well as New Zealand and Australia.
Today, the life expectancy of our people is 10 years less than the national average. The infant mortality rate is 60 per cent higher. Our post-natal mortality rate is 100 per cent higher than the national average.
Currently, many diseases are again raging in epidemic levels in our communities. Up to 40 per cent of the adult population in some First Nations communities have diabetes. The tuberculosis rate among the registered Indian population is 10 times the national average. Up to 30 per cent of the population in some First Nations communities suffer from a disabling condition. Suicide among our young people is six times the national average. In some communities, fetal alcohol syndrome is 30 times that of the general population. Domestic violence has reached epidemic proportions in most communities. Our communities, as you know, have few resources to address these problems.
Many First Nations also have unacceptably low standards of living which further contribute to poor health. According to government reports, half the houses on reserves are unsuitable and unhealthy places to live. The rate of overcrowding is 11 times higher than in the surrounding communities.
In terms of recent history, I wish to remind senators that, upon election, the current Liberal government promised the Indian people and the Canadian population that they would work with us to improve our health conditions and to create a new housing policy to address the deplorable housing conditions within our communities.
Over one-half the mandate of the Liberal government has passed. There is still no hope on the horizon that we will see a new housing policy, although the Minister of Indian affairs, Mr. Irwin, and the former minister responsible for CMHC, Mr. Dingwall, had the Assembly of First Nations go through the useless exercise of creating a cabinet submission jointly with these two departments with the promise that the cabinet would consider a new housing policy. That promise was made to us as recently as a year ago.
The issues appear to be based on negligence caused by the federal government. In its role as a fiduciary trustee of First Nations, your government has abdicated its trust responsibilities by disbursing health care programs and services through various levels of government without consideration to the governments of our people.
The decentralization of responsibility within federalism has affected accountability and the commitment necessary to deal with the health care of our people. Governments, both federal and provincial, point fingers at each other. They use numerous excuses, including the excuse of overlap, for inaction when it comes to the health conditions of our people.
As First Nations, we are attempting to change this picture, not only respecting health and healing, but in other areas as well. An essential part of the strategy is the preservation of traditional healing and the protection of traditional medicine as part of our everyday life.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, our traditional healers, our medicine people, herbalists and midwives, were the leaders of traditional First Nations' healing systems. These traditional healers used a holistic approach, namely, that good health or wellness is based on a balance between the physical, the mental, the spiritual, and the social realms.
Traditional healing approaches and child care practices combined with a holistic approach to wellness kept our people healthy. However, the educational system, coupled with repressive church activities and repressive federal laws banning our ceremonies under the Indian Act, undermined our traditional spirituality and almost broke the connection our people had with traditional healing throughout this country. Only in recent years have we seen the restoration of traditional healers and the reclamation of Indian health traditions.
As the role of traditional healers becomes known and becomes more utilized again in our communities, First Nations people begin to increase requests for such services. There is no legislative recognition currently of traditional healers. The federal and provincial levels of government have taken some tentative steps to support a limited incorporation of traditional healing in the health care services, and we applaud that.
Traditional medicine must also be understood in more holistic terms than western medicine. Attempts to compare the two from a western perspective fail to see and grasp the extensive way in which aboriginal medicine is founded on cultural practices and our relationship with the land. This is independent of the state-imposed values and regulations imposed by Parliament and legislatures. Our system works because our people accept the authority of our medicine people to effect changes in their everyday lives. It is once again becoming a way of life, complete with codes of conduct and systems of authority.
If we are to change the system and any laws governing health matters, this should be done to reflect the cultural and legal diversity that exists within the First Nations communities. If anything, laws such as Bill C-8 should recognize and support this diversity and help foster its growth, not impede it.
If any law is to be drafted, it should reflect on and support the need to recognize the aboriginal traditional healers in this country. This proposed law that you are considering can only be seen as another attempt to delegitimize or criminalize our people and our traditional practices. Laws should be made to protect all people and not to marginalize people, but laws made should respect the rights of people as well. This proposed law, Bill C-8, does not do that. Instead, it undermines our cultural and intellectual property. It does nothing to promote our people to heal and to assert jurisdiction over health and social matters affecting our people. In the end, if it proceeds, it will, in fact, serve as a harassment tool for Customs officers, for the RCMP and for bureaucrats who are disconnected from aboriginal cultural realities in this country.
More specifically, the committee must ask itself two basic questions: First, has the committee fully and comprehensively reviewed the impacts of this legislation on the medicines First Nations people use? Second, does anything in the proposed legislation interfere with the spiritual practices involving herbs as used by our people?
The issue is that no one can be certain. No one person or institute has a collection or inventory of all the herbs and medicines our people use. The shotgun approach of this legislation is likely to target some of our medicines.
By listing herbs and drugs in the legislation, you will be imposing a measure of control without knowing the impact of your actions on our people who are trying to heal themselves and who are trying to re-establish our own beliefs and practices and our culture in terms of traditional knowledge and healing methods.
Will this law stop our elder, Rufus Goodstriker, or any other healer from practising their culture and ways of healing? No one knows. The bill you have before you is so technical no one knows what it means. It may be that not even the chemists understand its impact. However, it does continue the fight between herbal medicine and the pharmaceutical societies, favouring the pharmaceutical societies.
The right to practice traditional methods and beliefs is guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The province of Ontario, for example, has funded a traditional healing program at Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora, Ontario, since the late 1970s. Under this program, First Nations patients who want traditional healing are put in contact with a traditional healer.
With respect to consultation, the government, including this Senate committee, has a duty to consult our people. There is no evidence to show that there has been any meaningful consultation as required in law as defined by the Supreme Court in Sparrow. In effect, this Senate committee and the Government of Canada have not upheld their responsibilities with respect to treaty and aboriginal rights, so we have to wonder: On what basis is your government proceeding with this legislation?
In summary, if this law is imposed, it will cause unnecessary hardship. It is certainly true and consistent with aboriginal and treaty rights, as well as the concept of self-government, that any control of these matters is best left where it is, that is, in the hands of the First Nation people themselves who know their herbs, who know how to use them, and who know, from tradition and practice, the effectiveness of these herbs for healing people. The government does not know that because the government does not know our people.
First Nations recognize the valuable role that traditional healers have provided in the treatment and care of our people. We also appreciate that the western medicine that is there to treat our people is valuable for all our health. However, traditional healing plays a valuable role in the health and social well-being of our people. Discussions are required to determine how to improve access and availability. The government must maintain and improve access for our people to their own traditional healers, not discourage that access.
First Nations must be able to conduct their own series of discussions with the government pertaining to traditional healing so that we can build a body of knowledge and understanding in order to make decisions that will be favourable to all of us.
There is a need right now for our people to deal with the government on issues such as the issue of accreditation. More discussion is needed to reach a consensus as to whether or not traditional healing should be integrated into modern medicine. Our healers also need the opportunity to discuss aspects of pharmacology, healing with plants, roots, herbs, bark, and others. We have some responsibilities as First Nations people to share our knowledge and to use our knowledge of herbal medicine in a good way. You do not have to tell us how to do that. That is a decision we should make together. Your government also has responsibilities.
The implications of the proposed act are very far-reaching. All people must be respectful and acknowledge the rights and cultural practices of each other. You have a right to your medicine, as we have a right to our medicine. We have no right to dictate how you practice your medicine, just as you have no right to dictate how we practice our medicine.
It is therefore recommended that Bill C-8 explicitly provide for immunity of our people, based on our aboriginal and treaty rights, from any direct or indirect impact of this legislation on traditional healers, herbalists, and medicine people. At a minimum, the proposed legislation must be amended so that our citizens, the First Nations, will not be interfered with in the exercise of their inherent aboriginal and treaty rights on a daily basis. Provisions must be made which recognize traditional practices in medicine and healing.
This recommendation is made to ensure that government and law enforcement officials are provided with clear and unambiguous directives to eliminate all forms of interference with our rights and our responsibilities. These proposals must be addressed fully with First Nations authorities. The federal government, as a prerequisite, must re-examine any proposed law by Parliament on the basis of the submission that I have made.
We thank you for having us here and for allowing us to make this submission on behalf of our people.
The Chairman: Thank you, Chief Mercredi.
Senator Milne: It was my understanding that this bill in no way changes the current law with respect to the use of herbal medicines. Perhaps there is someone here who can reassure both me and our guests in that regard.
The Chairman: I do not think there is anyone here, but we certainly can ask the officials when they appear before us next week.
At my request, I received a memorandum specifically on this question which seems to indicate that the officials believe that the conventions in Bill C-8 do not include medicinal herbs or homeopathic drugs, and that, in their view, Bill C-8 will not change the current situation for the First Nations concerning traditional medicines covered under this agreement.
Clearly, if there is a concern by our aboriginal people and they require further clarification on the situation, we can look into it.
Senator Beaudoin: Like many Canadians following the work being done by the commission on aboriginal self-government, I am most interested in this. I understand that they are to propose some kind of parallel system of administration of justice for the aboriginal peoples. Do you feel that this question of drugs should be part of that proposal of a parallel system of administration as far as criminal law or other infractions are concerned?
Mr. Mercredi: The concerns are not just about who makes the law, who enforces it, and how it is administered. Obviously that is a continuing problem in terms of our relations with Canada. We want a parallel system of justice. In the absence of that, we face the reality of your Parliament making laws without regard to our rights.
In Sparrow, a decision with which you are familiar, there is required a certain standard by Parliament in how they deal with the Indian people. In effect, it says to the Government of Canada, "Do not be an adversary to the Indians; be respectful of their rights. If you are to pass laws, consult with them. If you do not, and the law is challenged, we can overturn it." That is what the Supreme Court has said.
The issue for us is how your society deals with drugs, what is prohibited, and what is criminalized. Many of our people rely on prescription drugs. Our experience is that they are dangerous too. This bill is an attempt to control the toxic aspects of some of the medicines that people use. The problem is that there is no real common knowledge about what we do as a people and the drugs we use which are, primarily, herbs. There is no distinction between how herbs are to be dealt with and how drugs are to be dealt with. They are dealt with as one common item, either a food or a drug.
We do not know what the effect of this proposed legislation will be on First Nations. The bill contains many technical words which I do not understand. I was not trained in chemistry. If the drug Ethel Blondin gave me this morning for my cold symptoms were to be analyzed by a chemist, it might fall under into one of these prohibited categories. We have always used that herb for colds.
Senator Jessiman: Herbs per se are not set out in any of the schedules, are they? I looked for them, and I could not find a category under "herbs". Are you saying some of these items that are outlined in this schedule may be included in some of your herbs?
Mr. Mercredi: My colleague will answer that question.
Mr. Randy Bottle, Member, Alberta Health Commission: Some herbs and plants are used in common drugs, for example, Aspirin. There are other medicinal uses for such plants as the opium poppy, the jimson weed, the fever tree, and the rosy periwinkle. All these plants are used in modern drugs. It must be determined if some of these herbs are included in this list. There are some other herbs that could be identified by our traditional healers that could be in that list, and that causes us some concern.
Senator Jessiman: Have you asked the Department of Health whether some of your herbs are included?
Mr. Mercredi: They give us the standard response: "Don't worry. Don't be concerned, because we're taking care of you." The fact of the matter is that there is no trust. We cannot blindly trust the assurances of a bureaucrat. The last thing we want to see is passage of a law that will suppress our right to practice our own religion, our own spirituality, and to use our medicines as we have done historically for healing our people of the ailments that affect them.
Senator Beaudoin: You refer to the right to be consulted. Of course, I agree with you that, in the Sparrow case, that is exactly what the Supreme Court said. Are you complaining that you have not been consulted?
Mr. Mercredi: We have not been consulted.
Senator Beaudoin: Are you saying that you should have been consulted on this measure because you consider it to be an obligation of the Parliament of Canada, according to the Supreme Court in the Sparrow case, and because you do not share the views of the government?
Mr. Bottle: Apparently, at the time of the formation of the expert advisory committee on herbs and botanical preparation, the government felt that our First Nations were not involved in the use of herbs. However, if a First Nations representative had been part of that expert advisory committee, our concerns would have been addressed at that time. Because that did not occur, we were never really consulted. If we were to have input, it should have happened in that committee. That never occurred.
Senator Jessiman: You may have read or heard that a number of witnesses have testified that marihuana should be decriminalized and that it certainly should not be a part of the Criminal Code. Some have even suggested that it should be legalized, as is alcohol. What is the view of the First Nations in this regard? How would decriminalization affect your community? Would you support that or would you prefer the law to be left as it is?
Mr. Goodstriker, Elder, Assembly of First Nations: We have a neighbour two miles from our ranch who has been prescribed marihuana. How can a doctor do that?
Senator Nolin: What pharmacy did they go to?
Mr. Goodstriker: They live near Cardston, a good Mormon community where even drinking is now allowed.
Senator Jessiman: That probably is contrary to the law. However, I was interested in your community.
Senator Gigantès: I have a supplementary to this particular point of whether that is beyond the law.
The Chairman: I will go first to Senator Nolin.
Senator Nolin: I will get to Senator Beaudoin's point but first I want to clarify: Have you asked to be involved in the different early stages of the preparation of this bill?
Mr. Bottle: Purely the fact that we were not included in the expert advisory committee at that time was an indication that there would be no input from First Nations people.
Senator Nolin: I know you have not been asked, but when you do not hear from them, do you take any proactive steps? I am not blaming you for not doing that since I believe that is the duty of the government. However, if we are to respect the findings of our Supreme Court, that is a must. Have you taken a proactive stand?
Mr. Bottle: In order to be proactive, we would need to know of the bill well in advance. However, it only came to our attention in late fall of last year. It had already gone through third reading. Therefore, it is difficult for us to be proactive when it is almost after the fact.
Senator Nolin: When I was referring to being proactive, I did not mean when the bill is introduced in Parliament, I am referring to prior to that. To establish schedules like the one we have now, it takes more than a few days for it to be considered by the appropriate experts. However, I understand what you are telling our committee. You were not asked; and you did not ask.
Mr. Mercredi: May I answer that please? We have no obligation to ask.
Senator Nolin: I know.
Mr. Mercredi: We cannot read the minds of our parliamentarians. We are not the people who draft legislation. We do not sit in Parliament. The duty is on the part of the government to consult with us. There is no obligation on us to do anything. That is what it boils down to. It is as simple as that. However, the government failed in its duty to consult with us.
The Chairman: It is my understanding that you did not make a presentation to the House of Commons committee because you were not aware of the legislation and this is why the first presentation is, in fact, being made to the Senate committee rather than to the House of Commons committee.
Senator Gigantès: It is not illegal to prescribe marihuana. The Cancer Institute prescribes marihuana for people who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment which causes violent nausea. For some, marihuana provides relief.
The Chairman: I understand that that is by special licence and it is not a privilege which is given to every doctor or pharmacist.
Senator Lewis: To follow up on the question asked by Senator Jessiman, what would be your reaction to the decriminalizing of marihuana? Have you any opinions on that?
Mr. Mercredi: To my knowledge, we have never used marihuana in traditional practices. To my knowledge, we have never used it for medicine or any other purpose. We have used other plants which qualify as drugs, such as tobacco, in our ceremonies. That obviously creates some public health concerns. However, we use it in a special way in our healing ceremonies that our traditional people hold to help our people. In that sense we probably comply with whatever Health Canada expects in terms of tobacco.
Senator Lewis: Do you have any strong opinions on marihuana?
Mr. Mercredi: As to this preoccupation you have with marihuana, why not consult the Canadian people? Ask them what they think. Ask whether it should be decriminalized. You might want to ask them whether they should criminalize tobacco or alcohol. These are moral questions. It is not up to me as a national chief to provide you with an answer. It is not my law which is under review. It is your law and it is up to you to make a decision on how you will deal with that drug.
I am here to protect our natural medicine. I am here to protect the use of the plants and herbs we utilize for healing or for ceremonial or spiritual purposes. That is what I am addressing. Since I do not understand all of these technical or chemical terms referred to in Bill C-7, I do not know if some of the herbs we use are caught in that terminology. As a committee, you have a duty to ensure sure that they are not caught. Yet, since you do not know what our medicines are, we submit that we should sit and talk before you pass legislation.
Another way of doing that is to provide a clause in the statute which says that this bill will not affect Indian medicine, Indian healing, or Indian spirituality. That would cover our concerns so that we need not face further problems.
I can give you one example of how the law was violated by a guest whom I welcomed from Guatemala. In his traditional way, he uses coca leaves for spiritual purposes. He held a ceremony in my office using coca leaves. If the RCMP had been around, I guess they would have arrested him and maybe myself in the process; I do not know. I did participate in the ceremony with him.
Not everything on your list is considered harmful to our people, and not everything is harmful simply because you say it is in law. Some of these things are sacred to us. Obviously, for that indigenous person from Guatemala, the coca leaf is sacred to him. He uses it in a certain way. You can visit me at my office and I will show you the coca leaf he left behind, but do not bring the RCMP.
The Chairman: I hear you saying that, if we cannot do anything else, you would like to see an amendment which would state that nothing in this legislation can abrogate from the aboriginal treaties or the traditional practices of healers, herbalists and medicine people of the aboriginal people.
Mr. Mercredi: That is it. Thank you.
The Chairman: I should like to ask one question which relates to what Senator Jessiman and Senator Lewis were talking about with respect to the use of marihuana.
Over and over again we have heard of the number of young people who are arrested and convicted of simple possession of marihuana. Approximately 15 per cent of them actually end up in gaol because they cannot afford to pay the fines. Could you give us any indication of the impact of that on aboriginal young people?
Mr. Mercredi: I am sorry but I cannot, because I do not have any data on the use of marihuana by aboriginal youth. I cannot say that many of them are in gaol for that offence since I do not have the data. If you will do what I recommend I can tell you, but I know you will not do what I recommend. I think the elder wants to speak now.
Mr. Goodstriker: I have had some experience in this area. In the 1950s I was an RCMP special constable, regimental number 10435, K division, Cardston, for seven years. I saw our young people going to high school under a forced integration program. They sent our kids into white homes. Some dropouts introduced our kids to all kinds of different drinks, and so on, which our young people brought back to innocent communities. While I was a policeman for seven years, I never saw marihuana, cocaine, or anything like that. My people were just drinking home brew, wine and beer. That habit came from the outside, just like the other sicknesses which came from European people. This is the way I saw it.
I have been doing this since 1968 and before that I was a politician. I was highly respected by my people in the political world. I was the chief of my tribe. But when I got into spiritual healing, I found out that politics and medicine did not mix, so I left politics.
In 1972 my wife and I were appointed by the Canadian government to go to Frankfurt, Germany to attend the culinary Olympics. We were the ambassadors of Canadian Indians for the entry of the Canadian culinary team. In Germany they cooked what was eaten here before the arrival of Columbus. They won nine gold medals.
When I left on that trip, I knew my wife had a problem and I put some herbs in a newspaper and hid it in our suitcase. On the fourth day of the 19-day trip to Frankfurt, my wife could not get up in the morning because she had gall bladder problems. I suggested that either she go to see a local doctor here or that she go home on the next flight. She told me that she did not want to go to a local doctor. She just wanted to stay in bed. I said, "No way are you going to lie in bed. If you want me to take care of you, I will take care of you." She said, "You cannot do that. This is a hotel." I said, "I don't care what you say. If you don't want to go home or to see a doctor, I will look after you." I opened our suitcase and took out the newspaper which contained yarrow, grandfather root, sage and rosin weed. This was my gallstone medicine. I put it in a package and went down to the desk. There was a black interpreter there. He was told to take me to the kitchen where I asked the lady to make two quarts of my medicine. She smelled the medicine in the package and recognized it. How did she know what was in it? She was from Germany. She said, "We are barbarians. We still use herbs in the mountains." I went upstairs and gave my wife a cup and, in 10 minutes, she was up and was well throughout the 19 days of our stay. That is why I am in favour of this. It is a healer. The creator put it there. Animals know it; birds know it. However, we all know that western medicine is a big business.
I once treated a doctor who had emphysema. She came to me and asked for my help. She told me she was a doctor from Vancouver and that she had seen many doctors about her condition. She was being forced to retire. I treated her on January 14 and 15. She wrote me a letter on January 15. On January 25, I showed that letter to the students who are training to be doctors and nurses at Stanford University. She was cured in 10 days. I told her, "If you believe in God, you will be cured." She was cured of the emphysema that she had had for eight years. She has been a doctor for 20 years. I still have her letter. That is a miracle - not from me, but from the creator. That is the way our medicine works. I can tell you many more stories.
Mr. Frank Shawbadees: One senator was asking about marihuana. I agree that it came from the outside. Most of our suicides are not the result of the use of drugs, they result from depression. Our people are only trained to prevent illness, and they do not have a little piece of white paper that says they are qualified Ph.Ds, or whatever.
We have made submissions to various governments because, in many cases, suicides are caused by overdoses of Aspirin or sleeping pills. Will those drugs be outlawed? Will they be listed as "dangerous drugs"? I am sure they will not.
When I travel with my medicine, I have no problems with the American customs. I tell them what it is and they do not touch my bundles. The American customs know. But when I return to Canada, the Canadian customs people want to tear my pipe apart. They want to tear my bundle apart. Why? They are my sacred things. I have declared these items. How would they like it if I treated their personal possessions that way?
Sometimes I do not have the medicine I need, and it has to come across the border. My people live on both sides of the border that this country decided to agree on. They tear my bundles apart. Sometimes we trade medicines. Sometimes we do not have it and we trade.
As Chief Mercredi said, traditional practices are now carried on in Kenora. It took my uncle and myself six or seven years of fighting to get traditional medicine into that hospital. My uncle passed away. That is the only hospital I know of in all of Ontario where there is traditional medicine. There may be some in the western provinces.
You must realize that some of our laws do not meet your standards, and your laws do not meet our standards. We must be proactive, but how can we do this when we do not hear of this bill until third reading? It is as good as passed. It has to be that our sacred bundles, for those of us who have them, are considered to be sacred. Your government must realize this.
The Chairman: Thank you all for coming.
Honourable senators, our next group of witnesses is from the National Coalition for Health Freedom. Miriam Hawkins is the Coordinating Director; Richard de Sylva is President of The Herb Works; and Ralph Idema is President of Physicians and Scientists for a Healthy World.
Ms Miriam Hawkins, Coordinating Director, National Coalition for Health Freedom: Honourable senators, I will lead off with general observations about the bill. There has been much controversy and a number of viewpoints suggesting that herbal medicine may be implicated by the bill. In the bill, we see a general reference to natural substances from which dangerous substances might be derived. In other words, we see reference in the bill to the sources of potentially dangerous drugs being included as the drugs themselves. The marihuana plant is a good example and, with respect to cocaine, the coca leaves would be listed. The generalized wording of the bill lists the precursors.
I would like to cite, as an example of what is included in this list, one of the less familiar herbs which has been added to this list. It is a plant which has been known in Chinese medicine for 4200 years. It is called "ma huang" in China. Europeans refer to it as "ephedra". A 1.5 per cent derivative of ephedra is a substance called "ephidrene" which has been found in street drugs. It is also contained in over-the-counter cold remedies. It is a stimulant. This has been included in the legislation because it has been found in some of the streets drugs we are trying to control.
The same thing could happen to any number of natural products. Many natural products are stimulants and sedatives in various quantities, in various degrees and affect various organs of the body. Under this proposed legislation, the fate of any of the plants in the natural plant world is left wide open. Any plant can be added at any time.
We have some concern about the consultation process. We see a long list of herbal substances which are considered food adulterants by the Health Protection Branch and which include many of the native substances which were alluded to earlier. Many of the products come from countries where they are used traditionally, although we know little about them here. Many are traditional European herbal remedies. These are all being considered food adulterants because of their medicinal value.
Clause 60 would allow the minister to add any substance to the list at any time. Clause 58 stipulates that this act will supersede the Food and Drugs Act. Most of these medicinal herbs are now considered food adulterants, which is a new classification system for these herbs. If they are medicinal, they have to have a drug number on them. They will be called "drugs".
In my hand is an entire book about the medicinal value of foods. What are the distinctions between foods and drugs? We now have categories of medicinal plants which we are claiming could be considered very dangerous if we were to synthesize their derivatives. However, if you use the plant in its whole form, according to traditional methods, they are much safer than pharmaceuticals.
This is what happens now under the Food and Drugs Act. Clause 58 would supersede anything that is now being done in the public interest. If there is a safety question which has already been determined under the Food and Drugs Act, this new legislation would presumably subject all of these to control. These are not plants that should be restricted in the public interest all of a sudden. They have been used as medicines for thousands or hundreds of years or however long we have known about them. I am sure some of the other witnesses here would be delighted to tell you more about some of the specifics of these compounds.
In effect, under the Food and Drugs Act we are already calling certain items public safety hazards whether they are or are not. Perhaps Dr. Napke will present some numbers in that regard. I will briefly allude to what the FDA in the States has put together.
Between 80,000 and 120,000 people die every year from pharmaceuticals while only six die from herbs of any kind. This is an interesting contrast. Whether they come from herbs or are synthesized from components of herbs, they are much more dangerous in the pharmaceutical version. Even over-the-counter drugs are attributed with a minimum of 2800 deaths per year in the United States.
Some 26,000 people in Ontario are taking prescription drugs that they should not be taking. We have a huge health crisis in this country. Tens of thousands of people wrote to the National Coalition for Health Freedom and signed its petitions. I must have 30,000 names of petitioners. These are people who use herbal medicines and who consider any threat to their use to be highly contentious.
All kinds of items are now being stopped at the border. These are things that were available from five to twenty years ago. This year alone materials that were not stopped from entry before are now being stopped at the border. They are regulated as food adulterants because of their medicinal value. This new legislation would add yet another layer of potential control on health food stores. It would allow inspectors to make unwarranted searches on health food stores.
The Health Protection Branch should be protecting us from toxic chemicals. Some 67 per cent of Canadians with lawns are putting toxic chemicals on them. They are using chemicals which are harmful to little children who play on those lawns. It gets into their hands and mouths and causes permanent brain damage. It has all kinds of other effects in the development and growth of small children. Babies are being born with problems. All of these unregulated chemicals, toxic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are readily available. Ammonium nitrate is a grandfathered chemical. It just flows out of the factories and on to lawns and farm fields.
If we want to get into what is toxic, what is a health hazard, and what should be regulated and labelled by Health Canada, then we should be spending a lot more time worrying about pesticides and other toxic chemicals as opposed to worrying about medicinal herbs for which virtually no adverse drug effect can be found.
Efforts by the Health Protection Branch over the last several years to control these herbs is part of an international move toward controlling herbs by other than genetic patents. We will then have some kind of regulatory scheme with drug numbers and the whole nine yards so that certain large companies will have a better way of making a profit. They cannot patent herbs because they are natural products. However, I suppose there can be a regulatory scheme whereby something is called "medicinal" so that they must be taken off the shelves until massive research is done. They can then be reintroduced at a much higher price after so many years and so many companies have gone out of business. This is the problem we are encountering. The Assembly of First Nations is very right in being concerned that any of our medicinal plants could easily be included in this bill. The public safety mechanism is being used to ban them.
The fact that this bill will supersede the Food and Drugs Act means that many of these plants or herbs will be included, and that causes us to be suspicious.
Mr. Richard de Sylva, President, The Herb Works (Guelph, Ontario) and board member of The Canadian Association of Herbal Practitioners, National Coalition for Health Freedom: For the record, I would advise honourable senators that I represent two bodies of herbalists: The Provincial Central Canadian Herbal Practitioners Association, as well as the national body, the Canadian Association of Herbal Practitioners. As such, I can advise this body we have some very serious concerns about the implications of this bill. We feel that it is not the appropriate regulatory mechanism for herbs, either as foods or as medicine.
We would suggest that there be an exemption for herbs and botanical preparations as natural substances in this proposed act. Further, we recognize the government's need for some degree of regulation, which is why we would suggest a third classification under the Food and Drugs Act, so that there will be foods, there will be drugs, but that there also will be a third classification called "dietary supplements". I cannot emphasize enough that there is a very definite difference when it comes to a herb being classified as a drug. They are unlike other drugs. They are not 99.9 per cent synthetic in origin. They are multiple composites of different substances, each of which will address a different facet of either disease process or building health, and, as such, they fall half way between a food and a drug.
In the past couple of years, there have been a number of conferences in Toronto bearing the title: "Nutriceuticals", and we would suggest that this whole idea of a nutriceutical be a more appropriate classification because it conveys the idea that there are those substances, to wit herbs, that have elements of a food and elements of a drug.
In the existing Food and Drugs Act, we do not or cannot make traditional claims for our substances. We are constrained by Schedule A of the Food and Drugs Act which, for example, will list incurable diseases. They may well be incurable within the body of knowledge that is orthodox medicine. However, in the body of knowledge that is behind traditional or complementary medicine, and specifically herbal medicine, there are many examples of disease states that can, in fact, be cured by the use of herbs. We cannot say to the public we can use, for example, hawthorn to deal with heart problems. I have been specifically told by Mr. Tom Barker, Ontario head of the Health Protection Branch, that heart problems fall under Schedule 12 and are incurable. Why, therefore, he says, would you want to use a herb to cure something that is incurable? We are constrained from making our traditional remedies known because of the existing regulations of the Food and Drugs Act.
What we have seen over the past many years is an effort to define every single therapeutic substance as a drug. We disagree with that position. There are many cases of illnesses that have been cured by foods and food supplements. If the Government of Canada is to acknowledge that there are very real therapeutic benefits to foods, and food-type supplements such as herbs, then there needs to be a new classification. I would encourage this body to recognize this. If you wish, we would be glad to discuss this at further meetings. I could provide you with further information as to the points I am making today. However, I would like to end on the note that we are of the opinion that the Food and Drugs Act, and this proposed act, will not and cannot adequately represent or classify the therapeutic benefits of herbs as presently laid out, and we urge this body and Parliament to establish not only a new definition for a food and a drug, but also to include that third classification. I feel this is most important and I would encourage this body to give this some thought.
Mr. Ralf Idema, President, Physicians & Scientists for a Healthy World, National Coalition for Health Freedom: Madam Chair and senators, I am pleased to be here. I quickly threw together some notes. I would note, Madam Chair, that your home province, Manitoba, has a strong tradition of ethnic medicine, with the Ukrainians and the Icelandics, some of whom are my partners and friends, so I am sure you appreciate how important supplementary medicine can be.
Unfortunately, Dr. Napke is unable to be here, but I can represent his views and those of other doctors in our association. Dr. Napke does happen to be the retired chief of the Adverse Drug Reaction Unit, and in speaking for him, I would note that he would address the fact that, on the one hand, as I have noted in this piece which you have, over 100,000 deaths occur in North America from iatrogenic disease, which means doctor- or drug-induced disease, as opposed to almost nil from vitamins, herbs and supplements, and his particular thesis is that, quite apart from the deaths, a vast number of patients end up in hospital because of drugs. There are many components in drugs besides the drugs themselves. The supposed inert carriers, the materials added to drugs to carry them, to mix them, are often inert in that particular remedy but, when combined with other items that people are already ingesting, they become very active. As a matter of fact, as one of our other doctors, Dr. Gilka, has noted, 80 per cent of the people who end up either in hospital or at the doctor's office are there for what you might almost call mentally-related problems, largely because of the stress and the lifestyles in our society leading to generally bad health, including even heart attacks and a high level of cholesterol.
What we see, then, is that lifestyles that should rightfully be treated by supplements and holistic care are causing a great drain on our health care dollars and our hospitals. We find that as the minority, as practitioners of holistic or, if you will, complementary medicine, alternate medicine - it goes by various names - we appear to be under siege. I have a recent magazine here which shows four doctors being charged by their respective colleges of physicians in their respective provinces, and these are all holistic, complementary practitioners who practice both straight medicine and complementary medicine, and they are, of course, being charged with malpractice simply for recognizing such well-known facts as that candida exists in both males and females and treating it with herbs instead of ignoring it.
On the other hand, the herbs and supplements that these doctors are using are also under siege, and I would point out that even the Ontario Liquor Control Board has gotten into the act because most of these tinctures, for example holistic tinctures, contain alcohol. I have one here. This is a common one, echinacea. I could say a great deal about echinacea. First of all, the Ontario Liquor Control Board wants to stop these things at the border because they contain more than 0.5 per cent alcohol. They think that, by my taking 15 drops a day to prevent flu, I will get stoned and drunk. You can see where I get the feeling that there is some kind of conspiracy afoot by vested interests. The vested interests are largely traditional practitioners, and more so pharmaceuticals. We are faced with a problem where we have a shrinking health pie - in other words, the money going into health care is being reduced - and our competitors, if we could call them that, would like to have a larger share of that shrinking pie just to maintain their financial status quo, so we really feel under siege.
I would make some other points about echinacea, apart from the fact it grows in my garden and is a traditional Indian plant that Ovide Mercredi's people would certainly be using. It grows on the plains, it grows in Manitoba, and it probably grows wild in your backyard. Because it has clear medical claims of supporting the immune system, it can very easily be classed, even under existing legislation, the Food and Drugs Act, as a drug and be taken off the market.
This is part of problem, and this is where I lead into the main problem that Mr. dy Sylva mentioned. We have another definition problem. Although we are dealing with Bill C-7/C-8, in fact, I believe the senators here should recognize that we are essentially dealing with what is considered in the United States as three bills. There are three categories. There are drugs, nutritional supplements, and straight foods. There is a lot of crossover between the three of them, as Mr. de Sylva and Ms Hawkins can attest.
The definition certainly has to be considered and up-graded. Under the Food and Drug Act, which already severely affects health food stores, they can send trench-coat dressed spooks with narrow brief-cases into my wife's health food store to waste the people's tax money trying to supervise and to decide whether she is making claims. They use hidden microphones which will pick up whether a poor clerk has made a medical claim which means they can take the material off the shelves. This is crazy. It is bad enough as it is under the Food and Drugs Act. Can you imagine adding criminality to it by the passage of Bill C-8?
The present definition under the Food and Drugs Act is over 30 years old, from a time when "nutritional supplements", as a phrase, was unheard of. Essentially, any substance sold or presented for use in the diagnosis, treatment, mitigation or prevention of disease, disorder, or abnormal physical state, or the symptoms thereof, or in restoring, correcting or modifying organic functions, is a drug, and I would say that 30 per cent of all regular foods and 100 per cent of all natural food supplements that we are talking about here fall into this category. You cannot consider everything we eat to be a drug.
Mr. Mercredi would not like to lose the echinacea to fight his cold. He said there was an item in his cold remedy that might prevent him from taking it, and that item I would know as ephedra. I can imagine the Native people being very upset about having their traditional practices taken away from them, just as we in the holistic field of medicine are upset about having our practices taken away from us. We feel under siege from the traditional college of physicians and from the pharmaceuticals. We feel under siege from the Liquor Control Board who would classify half of our materials as alcohol and want to, perhaps, make the money on them themselves. We feel under siege potentially from Bill C-8.
I have been assured, Madam Chairman, by the previous minister that there is no intention to attach natural food supplements. However, I would point out that I have just illegally obtained melatonin which has just been taken off the market under the existing Food and Drugs Act. There are already 65 herbs and supplements under attack, some of which I am now taking, and this is under the existing Food and Drugs Act. What will happen when even more power to criminalize these very same things is added?
I applaud Bill C-8 in its original intentions, because I am aware of the United Nations conventions which Canada signed in 1988 to control the international trade in dangerous drugs. We have worked in our Caribbean island with the DEA on a five-year contract for that very purpose, so I know whereof I speak. I applaud the government for bringing in Bill C-8 to actually add legislative power to our signing of that international agreement so many years ago. We may very well be the latest to have signed it, and we have not signed it yet. Why, I ask, do we complicate this very good bill by piggybacking natural food substances onto it?
I believe that Bill C-7, as this bill was formerly known, would have passed long ago if only the government of the day had stuck to the original intent of controlling the trade in international drugs. That is all the drug enforcement agency of the United States ever wanted. We have numerous cases of perfectly good legislation being introduced, and I would include, for example, Bill 100 in the Ontario legislature. They piggyback something onto it that is not palatable, but they carry it simply on the back of the good part of the bill.
We are asking that you remove the natural food supplements from Bill C-8, let it do what it was designed for, and we should proceed with an office of food supplements and an appropriate bill dealing with it as I have suggested in my brief.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I am confused, and I do not know if other people share my confusion. It seems to me that the balance that needs to be struck between food and drugs for the protection of the Canadian people is not always a simple issue. You raised echinacea, for example, and the fact that you are taking 15 drops was in no way a violation of any concept that we do not want people to consume too much alcohol without some controls.
I can give you a similar comparison. Rice wine was being sold in Chinese stores in the inner city of Winnipeg, and there no real problem when someone bought a bottle, but when someone came in to buy 15 bottles, you knew they were not buying it for cooking. When they came in and they wanted 16 cans of Lysol, you knew they were probably not cleaning with it.
How does one strike the balance between the requirement for appropriate controls on foods and drugs and substances and also make it possible for natural food products to be sold in the marketplace? How do we do that balancing act?
Ms Hawkins: I would emphasize that you should start by dealing with the worst problems first. If there is more illness from prescription drugs, let us educate Canadians. Let us insist that the indications and contraindications of all pharmaceuticals be mandatory with the dispensing of them so that Canadians do not take home a drug without being aware of the good sides and the bad sides. There should be some independent body that produces this kind of information.
This kind of information could also be developed for herbs and supplements. Some of these products on this controlled list are well-known European herbs which are considered to be potentially toxic. If, for example, you take golden seal, a very familiar traditional herbal medication, and you take it while you are pregnant, you may miscarry. That is certainly something that we would want everyone to know.
It is important that there be the ability to talk about the substances that we have and for that information to be available to Canadians, whether this be done through the library system or through independent offices of pharmacological information.
People should be able to find out how much pesticide is on the apples that they are eating and whether it is in the apples. There is an abundance of information about much worse substances than any of the herbs listed here, such as these pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides that we are using without control. There is very little clear relationship between reduction of harm and actual government allocation of resources.
We do not see an allocation of resources to mitigate against the harm from pesticides. We see them calling anything with a medicinal value "a food adulterant" when we know that foods have medicinal value. We see a complete lack of consistency in any kind of mandate for harm prevention by the Health Protection Branch or Health Canada. If harm reduction is their mandate, then we are going about it all wrong.
We should be educating Canadians. They should have access to information about every drug they are taking. If we know already that there are 26,000 people on the wrong prescription drugs or on the wrong dosages, according to the Surgeon General, that is not acceptable.
Do we see the same problem in the herbal industry? Why are they being taken off the market? It is not because of a harm which is associated with them. There must certainly be another reason for these things being so stringently regulated. We have inspectors going around. We have lists at the Customs offices. Things are being sent back.
Anyone who has been to a health food store has seen the health journals and magazines, local, provincial and national. This has become Canada's popular choice. Canadians want to educate themselves about how to be well and how to stay well. We do not want to get sick.
Of course, heart disease is curable. You reduce the amount of fat in your diet. Everyone knows this. This is common knowledge. Why is our own health protection branch telling us that you cannot cure heart disease? Sure, you can start curing heart disease with herbs today. You can start curing it with food today, changing food and changing lifestyle.
This is all very well known. To me, Health Canada is completely wasting its time to go after herbs that people are now using with care. If as much information were available about the herbs and any contraindications which might exist as there is in the compendium at your drug store, people would be taking more herbs and fewer drugs. There are abstracts from many of these plants. Many of the side effects have been documented for centuries.
I think everyone is moving in this direction. More people are considering nutrition and supplementation. We are looking at a $17 billion cutback in health care spending in Canada over the next few years. This is a huge amount of money. We have to figure out how to save it and how to keep people out of the hospitals. Canadians want to understand illness and know how to prevent and recover from illness without taking dangerous drugs.
We know that the drugs and pharmaceuticals are more dangerous than these supplements. We know that it is the pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers that we are not regulated properly. Let us re-orient the mandate of the health protection branch so that it can do an effective job in that area.
The Chairman: That does not really answer my question. We do regulate pharmaceuticals. They may not have all the information which you and I think they should have. I do not disagree with you there. However, we do legislate them. You cannot get them without a prescription unless you are buying an over-the-counter drug.
What do you think will happen with the passage of this bill that will make it more difficult for people to get the herbs that they are getting at the present time?
Ms Hawkins: I tried to point out that it is the ability of the minister to add any substance at any time. It is the fact that this bill supersedes the entire Food and Drugs Act, even the parts left behind. The Food and Drugs Act is superseded by this act where any inconsistencies arise. Those inconsistencies then would fall back to the purpose of Bill C-8.
The purpose of Bill C-8 is to control substances that the minister deems necessary in the public interest. The minister could add whenever he deems is necessary in the public interest. We are already seeing the same wording and the same excuse, if you like, being used to ban herbs in the Food and Drugs Act. We are being told it is a public safety issue.
Why are we restricting all these herbs? Public safety. We must regulate herbs, give them drug numbers, and call them "food adulterants".
That is not what we need. It is clearly setting up a situation whereby any herb could be added.
Senator Milne: As a point of clarification, this bill is not superseding the Food and Drugs Act, as I understand it. It is the Narcotic Control Act.
Ms Hawkins: It amalgamates the Narcotic Control Act with sections 3 and 4 of the Food and Drugs Act. Sections 1 and 2 of the Food and Drugs Act remain.
Herbs are outside Bill C-8 at present. That is why there is a lot of confusion. Many of you do not know why we are still here. We are still here because the new act, although it will incorporate some parts of the Food and Drugs Act, would take precedence over any remaining sections of the Food and Drugs Act which relate to issues of public safety.
They may want to schedule some herbs which they say are dangerous in some way. They may want to take them off the market and insist that they go through all kinds of hoops to eventually get a drug number and maybe come back on the shelves or maybe not.
This is all very real in terms of the power that Bill C-8 would have over these substances, because of the inconsistency. One could argue that these herbs belong under the control of Bill C-8 because they affect public safety and public interest which are protected by Bill C-8.
It is no longer only sedatives, stimulants and hallucinogenic substances. If you look at the bill, the only thing left in there are substances that would be controlled in the public interest. These are all in the public interest according to the Health Protection Branch under the rest of the Food and Drugs Act which will be superseded by this new amalgam of the parts of the Food and Drugs Act and the Narcotics Control Act.
Mr. Idema: To get back to your original analogy with Lysol - apart from the fact that if you drink Lysol, you die - you may have meant Listerine.
The Chairman: I meant Lysol.
Mr. Idema: That is bad. Listerine is not as dangerous.
The Chairman: It is the favourite choice of drug in the inner city of Winnipeg.
Mr. Idema: Listerine is not as terrible. It contains 40 per cent alcohol and you can feel it do it, as they say. My point is that it is very easy to take too much or a damaging quantity of some items. In that respect, Lysol or Listerine have nothing to do with herbs. If the inner city youths are taking Lysol, it will definitely kill them in the long run. Listerine can not be much better for your liver.
I would say that supplements, on the other hand, have such minute quantities of active ingredients that is precisely why they are safe and have a 4,000 year history of being safe. The question then is: What needs regulation the most? Perhaps there is strong legislation in place about Lysol and Listerine in terms of alcohol consumption.
We are talking about something which, to respond to problems, should be in the separate category Mr. de Sylva mentioned. We really are here not so much to affect Bill C-8 as to point out that we should put this whole matter of supplements aside. Let Bill C-8 do what it was intended to do, control the most dangerous things first.
Ms Hawkins: The House of Commons was presented with the idea that herbs and food supplements should be added to the exemptions list contained in the bill, including alcohol, tobacco and prescribed drugs. Now all these exceptions have been removed, rather than adding herbs and supplements as proposed by another group called "My Health, My Rights." Many groups are very concerned about this.
Access to herbal medications is a constitutional right of Canadians. It is a right to life. Many people depend on herbs for their survival and for their recovery from life-threatening illness. I would suggest that these, as medicinal plants, would constitute a right to life.
Senator Gigantès: Senator Carstairs talked about regulating. There is also the aspect of regulating your profession. Remember laetril? It was supposed to cure cancer. Many people paid money for laetril only to have their hopes and those of their families dashed.
A cancer patient I knew well was told by people about wonderful herbal cures and the highly touted and respected provider of these herbal cures sold an awful lot to this cancer patient who, nonetheless, died.
There is this aspect that sits in the mind of people like myself that maybe - and this is the opposite of the fear contained in the bill - what you are selling does not do anyone any good, except yourselves.
Ms Hawkins: Freedom of choice is the bottom line. People should be allowed to chose laetrile or essiac. In fact, these substances are made of a selection of native North American plants. In some cases, they do reverse cancers; in other cases, they do not. How many medications actually do what they should do and how many do not do what they should do and hurt people? We could go on all day with all kinds of examples. If I have information about ammonium nitrate fertilizers, then I might make the choice not to use them on my lawn. If I have the information about echinacea, essiac or laetrile, I might choose to use them or I might not choose to do so.
Senator Gigantès: You are dodging the point.
Ms Hawkins: I might not choose to use chemotherapy, but Canadians need the information, and they need the ability to chose.
Senator Gigantès: The point is that this particular herbalist should have said, "No. This will not cure your cancer. It does not do that." But he did say that it did. He lied.
Mr. de Sylva: I agree there are products in the market place that have been touted as cancer cures and they are not. As a practising herbalist, I have come across them. Equally, I have used my own remedies to cure cancer. However, I do not have a great success rate, because by the time people come to me they have already gone through the regular orthodox system of medicine and are very close to death's door. Therefore, I do not have a very good success rate. However, they can be cured by herbs. Cancer is a very complex condition involving many different factors. There are herbs that will work.
If I may further address the chairman's earlier concern about regulation and how we differentiate between foods and drugs, what is good and what is not, I should like to say that there is a lot of information out there in scientific circles that will demonstrate the proper perspective that is required. I would refer you to an article in the April 1987 issue of Science, one of the science journals. This is an article by Dr. Bruce Ames entitled, "Ranking Possible Carcinogens". Dr. Ames is head of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California. As such, he was also the founder of the Ames mutagenicity test, which is used by many labs for determining which agents are in fact mutagenic. In his article, he demonstrated that it is not possible to extrapolate animal test studies to human beings, and that government regulators should be very cautious in doing so. He pointed out further that many of these carcinogenic substances we are concerned about are also found in ordinary foods such as potatoes which contain solanine. If they are judged by themselves, yes, they can be carcinogenic. If they are taken in their natural form - that is, in the food in which they occurred - the dose that a person receives in a daily diet is not sufficient to cause any problems. Therefore, I would suggest that there be a full and complete examination of the nature of herbs.
Dr. Ames went on to point out, for example, that one herb, comfrey, which has been banned by the Health Protection Branch, has the same order of potential for toxicity as the aflatoxins in a peanut butter sandwich. It is a matter of perspective. They are dose related. If we are to understand herbs, both as a food or as a therapeutic substance, we must consider the substances and the amounts that are contained therein. All of these substances fall within what is called the Ernst-Schultz principle of pharmacology, which basically says that in large amounts a substance will kill. In moderate amounts, it may paralyse. In small amounts, it will stimulate. In other words, everything is graded upon the dosage.
You will find this true of all herbs. Yes, there may be substances contained in these herbs that, by themselves in their synthetic form, will cause a lot of problems. If the herb is examined for the total amount of that particular substance, they will find that it falls within that scale and does not have that great a window or margin for error or toxicity. Yes, we must look at it in a scientific manner, but in a full and complete scientific manner. Let us not just focus on the active ingredient to the exclusion of the other buffers and compounds that you find in herbs. It is most important to take a look at the whole picture.
Mr. Idema: As Mr. de Sylva notes, we need an office of dietary supplements to look into these matters. It is definitely true that, generally speaking, the active ingredients in herbs are such a small quantity that no one could possibly abuse them as they could with Lysol or Listerine.
Abuse is not really a problem in herbs. That is why we again repeat these statistics: 100,000 deaths iatrogenic deaths in the United States per year from drugs; approximately zero to six, on average, for herbs. Herbs are not a problem.
What should we regulate first? We should regulate the hard drugs, the serious problems for which Bills C-7 and C-8 were intended. If we follow the example of the Americans, we set up a house and an office of dietary supplements and a dietary supplement act to look into these herbs and regulate and control their quantity and quality. There is a lot of abuse because of lack of control in the herbal industry. You cannot make claims or say anything about it. Fully 50 per cent of ginseng bought over-the-counter is not ginseng but just powder. As Senator Gigantès noted, there is fraud. If we have a house of dietary supplements, we can expose that fraud.
Generally, the herbal and supplement industry is one of the most self-regulated of any because people are choosing this in an informed manner. If you were go to my wife's health food store, you would see an entire counter full of books. People who self-administer to protect their own health are very knowledgeable. There is a magazine entirely devoted to stress and herbal treatments.
In that respect, Senator Gigantès, the industry is self-regulating. Knowledge would have prevented ignorant people from takingly laetrile. Laetrile was a problem of the 1970s when there were no such magazines around to inform people.
Senator Gigantès: I have a colleague who reads all these magazines. He takes an incredible amount of dietary supplements. He gets the 'flu; I take nothing and I do not get the 'flu.
Mr. Idema: I take them and never get the 'flu.
Senator Gigantès: Coughing between every word, he keeps nagging me about taking 60 pills a day of dietary supplements.
Mr. Idema: Talking about coughing, Senator Gigantès, we have the freedom to smoke. Why should we not have the freedom to take supplements?
Senator Gigantès: Taking my money for something that does not work is what I am worried about.
Mr. Idema: You spend money on smoking and alcohol - mind you, they work.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation. I think we have learned more about herbs than we knew before. That is the purpose of these hearings.
The committee adjourned.