The downtown east side Vancouver is third world we live in a open prison yard why should my kids have to live in that risk and that danger other citizens have rights as well you have a right not to inhale second-hand crystal meth smoke it’s really a case of the inmates running the asylum what is happening to Canada a country once considered immune from the most appalling displays of homelessness and Chaos has become an epicenter for shocking violent and at times random attacks as drug use has burst into the open and a devastating battle with addiction has literally left tens of thousands of Canadians dead but what is the solution do we simply need a so-called safe supply of toxic drugs should more provinces follow the lead of BC and decriminalize Fentanyl meth and cocaine or is it time to put victims first Crackdown on crime and get addicts the help and treatment they so desperately need I hate the word safe Supply because you would probably think it was safe to take and that’s the problem is that it’s not safe most people who are using this have never tried drugs before this like it’s definitely creating a lot more addicts than there was before what we’re doing now is almost capital punishment in our streets by neglect this is like the industrialization of addiction it’s as scary as it gets my name is Aaron Gunn and this is politics explained [Music] we begin with breaking news tonight police say a man stabbed and assaulted at least four people all in a matter of minutes and they are not sure of the motive video of the incident shows the woman pushed from the subway platform onto the tracks four victims retreated by paramedics after a woman allegedly assaulted them with a bottle police say the victim was hit in the head with a large pole while walking to class new details tonight about that stabbing attack that left one woman dead in another injured police now say this was a random act Canada is dying our one safe city streets increasingly defined by chaos robberies assaults homicides Reckless and random violence with no regard for age gender or in some cases apparent motivation of any kind a deadly Trend that since 2015 has seen a violent crime in Canada increase 32 percent a reality that has left many Canadians anxious and concerned according to a recent poll 64 percent of Canadians feel crime and violence have been getting worse while in Vancouver 40 percent of residents now report living in fear for their safety on a daily basis and it’s not hard to see why a woman on a Mobility Scooter brazenly attacked bus and SkyTrain passengers stabbed and throat slit with a knife and in March 2023 the shocking random and graphic murder of a father in front of his wife and young daughter in broad daylight outside of Starbucks on Granville Street all part of a terrifying Trend known as stranger attacks which have increased 35 percent in Vancouver last year alone but these shocking violent and random attacks are no longer exclusive to Vancouver foreign police say 16-year-old Gabrielle magaloisch was sitting on a bench at this Toronto subway station Saturday evening when a man approached him unprovoked megalovich was stabbed he was rushed to hospital but died not long after I’m like being sick or anything he was like stabbed in here and he bled out a day after the moving Memorial to Gabriel’s life I visited the scene of his murder to talk to Toronto residents still reeling from the attack you know it’s very unsafe I’ve been here I’m living here for many years and and every that is the worst year I see this Toronto the worst year and when you see something like that you’re feeling shock because it’s uh you never know where it’s coming the randomness of it as well is just really disturbing I don’t know as a young woman especially it’s like really scary it’s really upsetting because we were not that much older than him one is far more wary on the lookout very sad you know 16 years old for God’s sake no child should should die like that no adult should die like that this is sheer sloppiness from the government yeah it goes without saying that everybody should feel safe and not have to you know get on the subway platform Without Fear With Fear of getting stabbed like I feel like that’s the bare minimum but the murder of Gabriel megalese was hardly an isolated incident on the TTC Canada’s largest transit system has been rocked by Shocking violent attacks over the past year from random shootings to a woman literally set on fire I sat down with the former police chief of Toronto Mark Saunders to discuss how violence on the TTC and in Toronto more broadly has begun to spiral out of control you know you were the chief of police how does that make you feel to see what’s kind of happened your city it seems like people are scared to to ride the the transit system yeah the the transit system is is the lifeblood for so many people and and the fact that they are are scared it’s just not good you know you’re talking about a ridership that at one point in time is 1.2 million and it’s now 860 something it is a concern it’s the starting point of other things and um whatever you do don’t don’t normally lies don’t normalize disorder don’t normalize crime because if you do then it moves exponentially and you know we’re watching how how Toronto is moving that way and each attack leaves not only a victim but cascading trauma and pain that can level communities bystanders and families most of all I woke up in the morning and I had a Facebook message from my son Doug’s partner she wanted me to call her so I phoned her and she told me that there had been a random stabbing in Chilliwack the night before and and then she told me that he didn’t make it I got it through my head and um you know shortly after hung up the phone and I had to say to my husband probably the worst thing he’s ever had to hear in his whole life that his son had been murdered I guess it started with an altercation with this other man Steve and he ended up murdered and then a girl is on the ground with a stab wound and my son steps up to help now there’s a couple kind of shocking revelations reading about this particular case but the one that still I come back to over and over again was the fact that this individual with a long criminal history when I learned that this uh person had over 50 convictions some of them with a knife in his past he’d been labeled a sexual offender some of them with young younger girls when you have that many convictions I don’t understand how our justice system can allow him to be out walking the streets my son should never have been murdered instead of being behind bars for his over 50 criminal convictions Kirkland Russell was free to roam our streets and because of that Doug purseau was murdered even more shockingly for the crime of stabbing perseo 14 times with a knife and killing him while screaming out why won’t you effing die Russell received a sentence of only eight years do you think eight years in prison is Justice for taking the life of your son I’m pretty sure everybody knows my answer absolutely not I mean nothing will bring my son back but eight years certainly doesn’t help me help account for it at all um it’s almost a slap in the face it is it is a slap in the face to my son trying to help someone out done absolutely nothing wrong and then what shocked us further was that you actually get statutory release into after two-thirds of your sentence so we were shocked once again so he was let out in in November on parole and sent to a halfway house but when someone’s had this many convictions and they keep progressingly getting more violent more violent more dangerous when he’s out on our streets someone else is going to get hurt or or murdered this disturbing trend of a repeat violent offender being released to our streets is unfortunately not an isolated incident in fact Jordan O’Brien tubin the man accused of killing 16 year old Gabriel megales had already racked up dozens of criminal convictions himself including for stabbing someone else just one year earlier and was on probation at the time of the attack instead of being behind bars he too was set free and because of that Gabriel is dead but just how common is it for our justice system to release dangerous repeat offenders like Kirkland Russell and Jordan O’Brien tubin and as Canada’s justice system become little more than a revolving door to find out I traveled to Ottawa to meet with Larry Brock a former Crown attorney from Brantford Ontario who now represents his writing as its Member of Parliament I was just seeing more and more familiar faces in the criminal justice system being largely responsible for the the most significant proportion of serious criminal violence in our community a lot of stabbings a lot of shootings and frustrating aspect was they were continually being released these so-called prolific offenders who are consistently arrested and then released are responsible for a majority of the crime across the country the problem has gotten so bad in British Columbia that the mayors of the 13 largest municipalities wrote to then attorney general now Premier David EBY literally beg taking the government to do something they shared data that showed just 207 of the most prolific offenders in the province were responsible for more than 11 000 negative interactions with police in the last year alone a catalyst for surging crime and violence that has not been limited to the large metropolitan cities like Vancouver but has also affected much smaller municipalities including Victoria Kelowna and the once peaceful Vancouver Island city of Nanaimo recent numbers show severe crime up 44 percent here in Nanaimo I don’t feel safe it’s the first time I’ve you know I carry a knife now I will pull this and it’s an alarm to to for me to feel safe I don’t feel safe in my neighborhood this is Kevin Shaw an outspoken and long-time Nanaimo resident who’s fed up with the skyrocketing crime and violence plaguing his Hometown it’s gone from where we just had people freaking out yelling and screaming to Needles to knives being used to machetes the man who had been stabbed staggered into the mall bystanders rushed to help trying to stop the bleeding and to not survive to axes being used just a few weeks ago and now several shootings in just the last month presidents rallied into Nimo Thursday following a Brazen shooting over the weekend it just exploded a man came out of nowhere grabbing her by the throat and when she screamed for him to get off of her he proceeded to grab her breasts Aiden ties up here and you don’t know who this guy is at this point she’s not a random guy not a clue as an adult Tai has been criminally convicted more than 110 times they picked up a Paving Stone and then next thing you know he threw it up my wife and he hit my wife right here while she was 34 weeks pregnant we’ve had a bow and arrow that had a needle on it just a few weeks ago that was going to be aimed at somebody and shot with that Needle on the end of it I saw right over there a guy swinging around a machete we want to feel safe to come down to our downtown we don’t want to have it taken and run over if Nana was downtown own seems a little quiet it may be related to how people are feeling about it among the downtown residents feeling less safe is Brian Rice you’ve been broken into them yeah many times I I at one point it was like literally every six weeks it was I was having a break in if you’re struggling to meet your rent payment and somebody steals your kid’s bicycle or your kids bicycles I mean it’s it’s a bit of a crisis for you people rarely say chi Lin I need the pothole fixed they immediately want to talk about the street disorder I’ll use that term to describe all of the things that go on that are disturbing to people and that is is occurring a lot in this one block area of Victoria Crescent over the last month five businesses have had their Windows smashed just last night right here at uh that 50s barber shop and how is this location generally been been over those six past 16 years the past four or five years it really started to sink down and get really rough and I’ve built it up for 16 years and every little piece of this is a part of my personality so to see it smashed and stuff all over the floor and stuff was very disheartening it was just terrible security footage captures what police say is a drug-fueled rage in Nanaimo last night the window was broken at 10 o’clock last night the police got him because we could identify him and the cop said he’ll be out just after he goes to court in the morning after breakfast you can talk to the RCMP an officer right now if you walk by they could name off the top of their head who that small group of people are that are causing these problems this small group of repeat offenders have frustrated police not only in Nanaimo but across the country who increasingly feel handcuffed by A system that simply isn’t allowing them to do their jobs there’s a lot of frustration on the part of the police officers for the amount of time it goes into getting a charge before the car and they find that individuals been released and it commits another crime they may be arrested at eight o’clock in the morning and they’re telling police officers who arrest them they’re laughing at them saying I’m going to be released before you even finish your shift and it’s true which means if this is your 50th or 60th or 100th conviction for shoplifting b e uh theft of Auto the chances of you actually going to jail for any significant time is almost nothing zero had a conversation with cop one night and he said you know there’s nobody more aware of this problem than the police you know he said many of us got into the police force to fight crime to protect our communities and he says we spend our Time Babysitting criminals an individual who does shoplifting and they’ll have 50 to 60 convictions just on shoplifting this is what you the people you see downtown who are breaking into cars and doing residential or commercial B E’s and theft Vehicles this kind of stuff do people you think kind of these repeat criminals think they can gain the system they have they’ve been gaming the system since I’ve been a crown attorney they’ve been certainly gaming it under Justin Trudeau’s watch in 2015 and continue to do so with Canadians living in fear and municipalities begging for help how has the federal government responded has Justin Trudeau passed legislation to keep repeat violent offenders behind bars or by introducing Bill C5 in 2021 has he elected to go in a decidedly different direction there was 14 significant criminal offenses kidnapping criminal harassment discharging a weapon in the commission of offense an armed robbery trafficking in drugs such as Fentanyl there were significant mandatory minimum penalties for those offenses that’s what the government took away Justin Trudeau’s Bill C5 supported by the NDP received Royal assent in 2022 meaning that for the past year 14 serious offenses carried no minimum sentences at all but even more controversially has been another piece of legislation Bill c-75 the liberal government has table bill c-75 this looks at changing the way that our courts work with the goal of getting to more cases faster and perhaps making the process less prone to discrimination the federal government brought in a bill I think it was 2019 called bill c-75 and in c75 quite simply it lowered the bar when it comes to judicial interim release so it made it made it easier for violin to repeat offenders to get fail right Bill 75 was a bill that that changed the the nature of the Criminal Justice System judges were sort of dictated to consider release as the opening position for any individual regardless of circumstance regardless of the offense regardless of the criminal record of the offender it Shackled the discretion of Judges it emphasized to Crown Attorneys that we need to focus on the releasing the accused I love being a Vancouver Police Officer I don’t know if I could do this job today because I’m sure I would find it way too frustrating so if you’re taking a shoplifter and you’ve arrested this person three times or four times and you learn that they’ve got 150 previous convictions and you’re filling out this report that takes you two hours knowing when you’re writing it it’s going to go to Crown he’s going to get bail he’s going to be out or she’s going to be out in a matter of hours and they’re going to go back and do the same thing possibly at the same store so there is a frustration Factor because you don’t ever get ahead of things because the system doesn’t allow you to prevent this occurring again and it isn’t just thieves vandals and other Petty criminals that have been receiving bail on mass since the passage of the bill in the past three years individuals arrested for violent offenses who were then subsequently released were involved in 26 homicides and more than 2100 assaults in the city of Edmonton alone while in Windsor violent crimes committed by those out on bail have increased by more than 400 percent since it’s since its passage in some of the bail reform we’ve seen some very high profile crimes murders being committed by people out in bail I believe the individual that killed the opp officer was on bail that individual ought to have been detained in custody should have remained in custody that was a completely avoidable tragedy in my view there are some members of the community that shouldn’t have the right to be out they’re just so highly violent their their history shows that when they’re released they’re going to commit serious violence towards a community and By ignoring it you’re putting Communities In Harm’s Way to illustrate just how incomprehensible the situation has become data from British Columbia shows that since the introduction of Bill c-75 judges even granted bail 75 percent of the time to individuals charged with committing a violent offense who were already out on bail for another criminal charge the kind of brazen Insanity that solicited the rare non-partisan rebuke from all 13 provincial and territorial premiers in the country in the form of assigned letter demanding changes addressed to prime minister Trudeau but a closer look at cop killer Randall McKenzie’s bail application shows something else equally troubling the judge acknowledged MacKenzie’s record of violent crime but decided to release him anyways due to his indigenous identity part of a growing and controversial Trend in Canada’s justice system to weigh ethnicity and skin color against concerns of Public Safety in Vancouver Police are now forced to take into account a suspect’s ethnicity when deciding whether or not to handcuff them while across BC the NDP government explicitly directs prosecutors to weigh against pursuing criminal charges just because an offender happens to be indigenous and approach retired VPD Officer Curtis Robinson strongly disagrees with if you commit a crime the color of your skin shouldn’t matter you just broke into the house and beat this guy half the death of the pipe everybody should be subject to the same rules the color of your skin should not be a factor another thing that’s propped up a lot um is the idea that there are two different standards in the criminal justice system for people with different ethnic backgrounds do you think that’s a slippery slope to go down as a country well my view has always been that the law in Canada should apply the same to everyone irrespective of cognitive ethnicity sex whatever there shouldn’t be two sets of laws to me it’s bad policy you can’t you can’t have different rules for different people in the same country as you said the case in Saskatchewan probably should never have happened I mean it’s hard on the facts that we know it’s hard to understand why the person was out in 2022 repeat violent offender miles Sanderson who had already been charged 125 times including twice for attempted murder was released in part due to his indigenous identity he returned back to a small community of James Smith Cree Nation where he would shortly thereafter violently murder 11 innocent people in a stabbing Rampage the majority of whom were indigenous an example of how releasing violent criminals just because of their ethnic background can Boomerang back to hurt those very same Canadians the most the criminal justice system has abandoned the idea that crime has to be punished so that’s why I think we we get these strange results because we’re as a society we seem unable or willing to punish people who do evil things and when a justice system can no longer prevent criminals from committing crimes or provide victims with the restitution they deserve individuals often feel forced to take matters into their own hands Clint Smith a small business owner from Nanaimo has had to deal with a crippling amount of property crime at the location of his business one day Clint received word from a friend that has recently stolen property had been spotted at a nearby tent encampment with police either unwilling or unable to retrieve his property on his behalf he headed down at the embankment himself along with a small group of friends as I went down there I mean I I point blank said I wanted no violence no aggression and I wound up uh shot in the hospital and and yeah so that part if you feel comfortable talking about it obviously at some point a gun came out from one of these individuals or three different guns three different guns yeah one was a pellet gun one was a 22 rifle you were shot with the 22. I was shot with the 22. there was a lot of 22 shots flying around all over the place the biggest failure as a father and biggest regret as a family man is what I put my wife and my son through Clint spent five days in a medically induced coma undergoing three surgeries which saved his life but four days later after Clint woke up his attacker had already been released on bail and Craig Edwards truckel who had inexplicably only been charged with pointing a firearm added another offense to his already lengthy criminal record I don’t think I can emphasize how crucially critical this has affected my family my wife has been traumatized my son has been traumatized it’s ruptured the community around me I feel like I’m like an epicenter of fractures through our community this shocking story and others have galvanized the community banding together to form safety groups like The Nanaimo Area Public Safety Association I met with a member of that group who watches over Nob Hill Park in downtown Nanaimo has this park had any problems itself this park has had huge problems not when I was growing up it was a safe place everyone you know the kid this was filled with kids and you just came home at dinner time kind of thing nowadays your car gets broken into Petty crimes constantly you can find people in your backyard sometimes shooting up there’s Shady people you know staying overnight here tenting the park can get filled with needles you just you would not be able to leave your child or let your child go to the park but it’s not just parks where homelessness open drug use and Anarchy have taken over it’s in much of the downtown in Nanaimo a city of just a hundred thousand there are an estimated 700 people suffering from drug addiction currently living homeless on the streets to get a sense of the scale of the issue in the city I joined Nanaimo Community safety officers as they conducted Wellness checks downtown on those at risk to OD it became immediately apparent that this small coastal city had a very serious problem [Music] foreign [Music] how much worse is kind of the drug and addiction from gotten an enimo compared to when you were growing up here yeah I can’t even quantify how bad it’s got but it’s it’s bad you know like I say I’m born and raised here and this is the worst I’ve I’ve seen the streets and this right now just to explain what’s happening you guys do this this is a this is a wellness check yeah just a wellness check so uh make sure people are okay you know do they need to be connected with our Island Health Partners for a wound care [Music] thank you hey you guys okay you guys good okay just checking Nanaimo has eclipsed its highest annual total of Overdose deaths in just 10 months it’s a terrifying Trend taking place across the country and it’s killing an average of 17 Canadians a day the powerful opioid fentanyl is the main driver it’s been found in the systems of 85 percent of people who overdose this year drug addiction in Canada is out of control crack crystal meth fentanyl these dangerous drugs have ravaged Canadian communities killing more than 6 000 Canadians just last year including more than 2 000 from British Columbia alone an increase of more than one thousand percent in just 15 years but just how addictive are these drugs and what makes them so addicting to answer that question I met with Dr Nathaniel day and addictions Medicine Specialists and former member of Alberta’s opioid emergency response commission opioid addiction is such a terrible Affliction like if you and I were evil and we were trying to mess up people’s lives using a drug and opioid’s the perfect drug to do that with if you take the same dose that makes you high today for about five or six days that dose will not make you high in that same way after that five or six days and you’ll need more as soon as you stop you get desperately sick you know that withdrawal nightmare really is reinforcing for people where their brain screaming at them saying you can fix this right now all you have to do is score the prevalence of drugs like fentanyl in the streets of Nanaimo have made overdoses a common occurrence with a record 74 people dying in the city from overdose just last year part of a much larger battle with addiction I witnessed firsthand again that evening when I accompanied a community safety officer on his nightly Patrol after only an hour we came across one such individual in serious medical distress [Music] for ambulance please thank you [Music] the community safety officer I was with introduced me to a homeless woman the following morning I wanted to know how the streets had changed since the opioid epidemic had spiraled out of control the opioid epidemic I mean you obviously have a front row seat to to being an IMO and almost like most affected communities in over 2 000 people died last year in BC from overdose yes have you seen that also been getting worse um I didn’t even know what an overdose really was I had never seen it until I was on the streets I’ve seen it too many times now the past two years I don’t know how many people how many of my friends that I’ve lost yeah a lot shorts yeah it’s just getting worse um I can tell you as of right now in the last five days five people have have passed away that are actually quite close to me I had a good friend of mine who overdosed in the forest here just last night actually yeah do you have a problem with the addiction of anything or alcohol yeah yeah fentanyl for sure yeah is there a reason why you prefer kind of the forest and in the streets um you know not that many people come into the forest especially at night just not as safe as night at night as it used to be a lot of people we’ve talked to said it’s got a sketchier being on the street that used to be because there’s a lot more of them I’ve seen a lot of new faces in the last three weeks really a lot of new faces and that creates some issues or it creates Havoc it used to be so much safe you to be able to sleep outside and it would be okay your [ __ ] wouldn’t get stolen it’s been the last I’d say about four years it’s gotten progressively worse now it’s just the worst when I when I first started Living on the streets here there were there was just a short handful of us we were a small tight-knit group for the most part but now there’s there’s just so many freaking homeless people everywhere do you feel less safe than you used to oh yeah are you kidding I sleep with something in one hand and something on the other hand and I’m not kidding like you have to hide otherwise you don’t know what’s gonna happen I mean you get four guys there’s nothing I can do 9 out of 10 people on the street are carrying a weapon at all times that would say what do you think’s causing that is it different kinds of drugs or just new people or Splitter on the nod you could deal with someone right now in an hour from now they’re having a mental breakdown or they’re high or coming down off their drugs and they’ve got to rock and want to smash a window out or there’s conflict amongst the group not much of it in your opinion is being fueled directly or indirectly by issues relating to drugs and drug addiction well there’s two issues one we have politic offenders who either curriculum vitae I’m a criminal I do crime and normally to fuel their drug addiction then we have issues in the community where people who have drug addictions they have mental health issues that are unchecked those are the ones that are causing real concern those are the ones where we see these sporadic incidents of violence where they’re fixated on a window and they break it or they’ll randomly assault somebody in the community that’s troubling how much of that is directly or indirectly related to drug and drug addiction oh I would say all of that and when your cities have rampant open drug use the chaos that inevitably follows is right out in the open for all to see random attacks are on the rise Vancouver Police are investigating an early morning homicide on the downtown east side it is the same Tim Hortons where an employee had hot coffee thrown at her a week earlier a disturbing murder on the downtown east side he was found badly burned shortly after midnight a stranger to her came up to her poured some sort of her on fire the suspect allegedly stabbed our victim with a hypodermic needle when it comes to lawlessness and drug-fueled Chaos there is still no place quite like Vancouver’s downtown east side I met with Leo Knight a retired Vancouver Police Officer to ask him how the downtown east side had changed over the past 30 years people did not live on the streets back in the day in the downtown east side there was no such thing as injecting drugs on the street it just wouldn’t happen I guarantee you that if you go down the downtown east side right now they’re all drug addicts the 100 East Hastings now is is it’s a zoo it’s it’s the largest largest open-air drug Bazaar in the world accompanied by rampant drug addiction and the mental health issues it brings the downtown east side is a dangerous place Marshall Smith was once a resident of the downtown east side before entering recovery and gradually rebuilding his life incredibly rising to the rank of Chief of Staff to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith at some point around 2004 sort of lost my career to drug use and wound up hanging up my suit and tie at the legislature and Vanishing into the streets of Vancouver where I lived for four and a half years as a as a homeless drug addict obviously those were very dark and difficult times in my life as part of Marshall’s role as Chief of Staff to the premier and because of his unique background and experience he has helped spearhead Alberta’s opioid response strategy over the past four years a strategy that differs significantly from the one being pursued by David E B in British Columbia and supported by Justin Trudeau we’re willing to work with provinces who want to move forward on different steps we’re having good conversations with the British Columbia about something they want to do there but they’re specifically calling for decriminalizing drugs yes they are and we are looking at where to do that British Columbia is looking about at that talking with that and we are working with them to see how we can move forward with them in the right way on January 31st 2023 the government of BC granted approval by the federal government made it legal to possess certain quantities of hard drugs including crystal meth heroin Fentanyl and cocaine declaring in no uncertain terms that open drug use was now legal on the streets of British Columbia and the results were immediate and available for all to see how did that like change on a on the ground like that you’ve seen with your own two eyes oh within within the same day the everything changed the next day it was tenfold it was everywhere people using like crazy there was a guy in the washroom shooting up and they said hey you can’t do this in here and he said and he said it’s legal now we can we can do whatever we want so you can’t stop us it’s illegal to do Drive on school property or at the airport the rest is fair game and they actually said there’s more stricter bylaws about smoking tobacco near my door than there is about drugs so you can’t smoke a cigarette near my door but you can smoke meth all the rules are gone now so it doesn’t matter you can openly smoke crack in front of a store and someone that tells you you’ve got to move on is going to tell you where to go is it is it easier to take you to dissuade someone from drinking alcohol openly in public and using some of these other substances well we can actually do something yeah when someone is drinking in public we can issue a ticket for I think it’s 230 dollars for consume in public and where somebody is smoking a small amount of crystal meth or fentanyl and it’s under the 2.5 grams there’s there’s nothing we can do if they’re not within those sanctioned areas candidly we know that the police for the last two years pretty much everywhere have not been charging drug users who had small amounts anyway if I walk down the street at 9 with a beer in my hand I could be arrested and fine but if I’m taking crystal meth sitting in the bench in front of you know everybody’s favorite coffee shop no big deal it it’s that kind of approach and again as I I understand the concept but I must say just as a human being and a citizen it ain’t salable politically it doesn’t make sense and no one honestly believes it’s going to reduce the number of deaths from the toxic drug Supply the only thing that that does is empower the drug dealers and Empower The Gangs basically what you’re doing is you’re giving them the ability to have under the legal limit and that they just have to do extra runs for the drugs but if police weren’t arresting drug users for possession why did Trudeau and the BC government push ahead with their plan to decriminalize drugs well in their words it’s all part of their plan to destigmatize drug use across Canada believing that this will somehow entice more drug users to seek treatment and Recovery through this exemption we will be able to reduce the stigma the fear and shame that keep people who use drugs silent about their use but is that actually true my experience is that they’re you know people who are who are struggling with addiction don’t really care about the stigma associated with possessing drugs or or using drugs there is a certain narrative that if you say that stigmatizing when it’s supposed to inherently apologize you know I should approve of everything no one really believes that you know it’s a question of what do we stigmatize it the challenge is that sometimes shame and stigma are why people seek treatment we have never had more success when it comes to treating Addiction in our society than we have with addiction to tobacco and we take a very strong approach right we tell people that they should quit we tell them that help is available we make that help free you know we help them in their recovery we expose them to the consequences of their actions we stigmatize them right you know for what they’re doing but for whatever reason uh you know the advocate drug user Advocates have gone a different direction with other substances they started with this what they call harm reduction right trying to prevent the harms instead of preventing drug use and I say the biggest form of harm reduction is preventing drug use in the first place you know these people who sit in their little offices somewhere and have never dealt with an addict have never treated an addict I’ve never talked even to an addict like I have think that people don’t go to treatment because of the stigma involved well that’s horse hockey you know like when when someone’s addicted all they’re capable of is thinking about how they get their next fix you know the brain gets hijacked by the addiction harm reduction is like throwing in a life preserver but leaving them in the river over the past 20 years drug prevention programs in British Columbia have been scaled back dramatically and replaced with what’s known as harm reduction ranging from the provision of naloxone kits to students as young as 15 to the distribution in at least one case of safer snorting kits at a high school on Vancouver Island but in truth these so-called harm reduction policies from government along with decriminalization are only just the beginning their real objective is something else entirely we know that anchoring ourselves in science and data making sure that issues of harm reduction safe consumption are put to the Forefront we will continue to be grounded in what works in compassion in evidence making sure there’s a safer Supply so people who are addicted can get clean drug supplies as opposed to having to buy the dirty and deadly stuff safe Supply it’s a buzz phrase used by politicians and Drug Advocates alike meant to instill public confidence that the powers that be are taking the overdose crisis seriously and are doing something about it but what does it mean according to health Canada safe Supply or safer Supply refers to providing prescribed medications as a safer alternative to the toxic illegal drug Supply its intention is to help prevent overdoses and save lives now at first glance that sounds pretty good but looking deeper into what safe Supply really means the sunshine in rainbows quickly fade into a dark dystopian nightmare you’re looking at what’s intended to be British Columbia’s first legal cocaine lab on February 17 2023 add Astra Holdings a cannabis company based in Langley BC received approval from Health Canada to legally import cocoa leaves and manufacture cocaine the company CEO said in a press release that it will explore the commercialization of cocaine to provide a safe supply of the drug this follows a ramping up of supposed harm reduction policies in the province even the launch of vending machines containing heroin substitutes all under the guise of safe Supply but this isn’t just happening in BC I traveled to London Ontario the epicenter of the push for safe Supply in that Province to meet with Dr Sharon Koivu an expert in the field of addiction and safe Supply I wanted to know exactly how long this has been happening in London and where it all came from safe supplies started in London in about 2012. there were lots of people who are very vulnerable particularly people that were identified as being vulnerable were street level sex workers so the initial thought was to keep people safe so they don’t have to be selling their bodies to get drugs was to give them a prescription and the prescription that was decided on was Dilaudid Dilaudid is the brand name for the opioid Hydromorphone a drug used in medical settings to reduce severe short-term pain this Hydromorphone for people that don’t know for recruiting myself just kind of a low-level opioiders this is this a power no it’s a powerful addictive opioid it’s similar to Oxycontin it’s a very powerful very addictive opioid once a last-ditch pain medication Hydromorphone has found its way into the safe Supply program it’s now freely prescribed by doctors to add as a theoretical substitute for street drugs we are giving out huge amounts of a very highly addictive very dangerous opioid narcotic like safe Supply is a marketing term it’s not a medical term it’s a term that was made in a board room with Communications experts and Advocates and it’s made to communicate to people the feeling of safety it’s not safe we’re referring to that as though it was safe and it’s not safe I don’t like calling it safe Supply because it’s not safe but how different really is Hydromorphone from other opioids like fentanyl how powerful is Hydromorphone and how addictive can it be to find out I met with a pharmacist in BC who wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job basically the biggest one for safe Supply is Hydromorphone Hydromorphone is like 20 times stronger than morphine this whole term of like safe Supply like I’d like to know what the definition of safe is there’s no such thing as a safe opioid did you be concerned if you had family members or friends that started using these on a regular basis 100 100 like I would never take it I would never tell one of my friends to take it funny enough I actually did one time my friend broke her ankle and she was prescribed Hydromorphone for pain but she was prescribed one milligram tablets to compare that to the safe Supply the one that we prescribed as eight milligrams so she prescribed one milligram for pain and I even warned her on how addictive that can be how many pills would you guess that you you would dispense on an average shift probably a thousand today a thousand a thousand a day if one milligram of hydromorphone can be dangerous and addictive you can imagine how dangerous the eight milligram pills are that are freely handed out to addicts but perhaps that is the point pharmacies are a business like any other and they rely on a steady stream of customers and with the addictive nature of hydromorphone it’s big business for these pharmacies and that has led to some shady business practices can you also explain there were some scandals in the downtown east side that you also saw about how what was going on between the pharmacies yeah so I think it’s more prominent on the downtown east side because there’s so many pharmacies like you go down the street and you see it’s like Starbucks you see you see pharmacies on every single Corner um but when you’re somewhere like Vancouver where there’s so many different pharmacies it’s like what makes a patient want to choose this Pharmacy or the other Pharmacy right a lot of the pharmacies on the downtown east side will provide like monetary incentives to their patients to come to their Pharmacy essentially Kickbacks yeah like and you saw that like it was yeah like it was normal and then pharmacies will offer more and more money because they want those people to come use their Pharmacy because I guess if it’s a daily thing that’s yeah for a whole year it could be ten thousand exactly a thousand dollars in business for them so you offer a patient 100 bucks it’s the whole world to them but it’s nothing to these Pharmacy owners based on how much money they’ll make off of them a legal business practices aside maybe paying addicts to take safe Supply is a good thing that is if bribing an addict to take Hydromorphone means they won’t take fentanyl shouldn’t that decrease deaths from overdose since the introduction of these so-called safe Supply drugs have you seen that help with reducing Fentanyl and Fentanyl overdoses we had very little fentanyl in London prior to Safe Supply since safe Supply we now have a huge problem with fentanyl in the city there has been an increase in overdose deaths an increase in use of Fentanyl and a decrease in the cost of fentanyl in the city as well the presence of hydromorphone is not touching in any positive way fentanyl on the street if anything it is fueling it but how could it possibly be that giving people a replacement for fentanyl would somehow increase their use of that exact same drug addicts want fentanyl right they want the big high and the big hit they pursue fentanyl because it is a it’s a superior High to what they’re getting from the from the these hydromorph pills it was just about chasing the next high it was just about getting high it didn’t phase me the stronger the drug was the better that’s what people would go look for really because would it the stronger it is the better if you know people who are overdosing on that that’s the stuff that people want really because that’s how I guess the quality is better when people are overdosing on it okay well that’s the stuff I gotta get I didn’t even create like I didn’t care about my life do you ever have any experience with seeing patients when it comes to this so-called safe supply of not adhering to how they were supposed to take it or not taking it every single day every single day they’re either injecting them or they’re taking all of them at once or they’re not taking them at all and that’s but not taking them at all is we’re gonna have the biggest problem and why would they not be taking them at all to sell them to make money and so they’ll take their daily Supply bottle that they get and they’ll sell it on the sidewalk and they’ll use the money to buy fentanyl right now for example I am seeing a patient who is prescribed 40 tablets of d8s that allotted eight milligrams every day we have her on nine in a day that means she is likely selling 31 of the 40 pills that she has prescribed what many Canadians might not understand about safe Supply is that most addicts don’t want to take the prescribed drugs like Hydromorphone instead they get prescription safe Supply drugs with the purpose of selling them so they can purchase the drugs they actually want like Fentanyl and according to the BC pharmacist I spoke with patients ever Pharmacy don’t even bother hiding this fact I see it quite literally see it every day I will see patients come into the pharmacy and they will pick up their prescription walk out of the pharmacy and hand a bottle of pills over to somebody and have a cash exchange and sell their pills that’s how easy would it be for someone to walk over there and get easy yeah very easy it’s uh there’s no control over the medications my kids could walk around the corner and easily get it people would be prescribed these medications and there would be people waiting outside the pharmacy in one of the towns here they would be waiting outside the pharmacy because they knew someone was going to eventually come out and sell their prescriptions it’s become so common to sell your prescription safe Supply that dillies are like a type of currency now oh you want a blanket okay give me two dillies and I’ll give you this blanket that I found or there’s the monetary value of selling it and most often times patients will sell their dilaudids and then go buy something stronger it took us about half an hour on East Hasting Street and we were able to buy 26 tablets we’re told this is Hydromorphone also known as Dilly’s also known as Dilaudid total price thirty dollars a little more than a buck a pill I almost feel like sometimes I’m like this has to be a joke like this isn’t happening right like it’s like even people know like I’m gonna go wait outside of this Pharmacy and that person’s gonna go in there and get their Deli and then I’m gonna buy it and it like almost makes a joke of what we’re doing it makes a joke of the pharmacies it makes a joke of the clinics anybody knows that they can just sit outside a pharmacy and buy it you could go sit there right now and watch it happen it’s very very in the open they don’t even try to hide it far from trying to hide it sidewalks around the safe Supply pharmacies like this one in Nanaimo had it all out in the open the remnants of consumed or traded safe Supply littered the streets a phenomenon that anyone living close to one of these pharmacies in a safe Supply Province can tell you is a new feature of Canadian cities no matter their size I read an article the other day in Nanaimo I think it was where they just found you know routinely pill bottles littered all over the place from from addicts getting their supply and dumping the bottle and selling it Colin Middleton a resident of downtown Nanaimo lives a block away from a safe Supply clinic and Pharmacy after moving to Nanaimo from Calgary he started to notice a pattern in the garbage littering his street late last year I was just kind of picking up trash on the sidewalk outside of my house and I came across you know a label I picked it up looked at it I was like I didn’t know what Hydromorphone was why would somebody peel off the label so then so then in January I found another one I was like okay this is a pattern now but before I knew it I had over 80 of them one day I went into the pharmacy I said look there’s obviously a problem here and you need to deal with this and the pharmacist said like if there’s not really much we can do you know go talk to the doctor tell them what you think or like take it up with the province or whatever but it’s only been since then that I’ve come to understand that our medical profession already knows this is happening as a way for quote you know safe supply of opioid medications getting into the street Supply shockingly a handful of doctors that prescribe safe Supply are not only aware that the Hydromorphone is being diverted they seem not to care best case scenario the doctor will like okay that’s not right let’s discontinue it this patient clearly does not need it for themselves it’s not safe let’s discontinue it but I’ve also had situations where I’ve told the doctors that the patients are selling the medications and they don’t care and I have had doctors tell me well that’s okay if they’re selling because that means that somebody somewhere is getting a safe Supply so it’s just crazy how something that was supposed to be meant to help people what I’m finding is the people that are buying these pills it’s like sometimes people who have never even tried opioids and what bothers me the most is that I see like young kids coming and buying these pills the Hydromorphone is ending up in the high schools now and it’s become so normalized in high schools that you can walk around in high school and just ask for dillies really what the safe Supply is doing is it’s just creating the next generation of people who have opioid use disorder [Music] this is a 16 year old girl currently in recovery from Hydromorphone addiction when did you first hear about Hydromorphone or what kind of names are people using forward on on campuses so obviously being young you don’t know too much about what everything’s called what the professional names for let’s say what it is so it would be daily or Dilaudid and stuff like that nobody ever really calls it Hydromorphone or anything like that um and when did you first like hear about it do you remember or when did you first notice people using them or I’d say when I like started grade 10 like beginning of grade 10 so beginning of last year it almost destroyed my life thanks to our own government introducing safe Supply drugs like Hydromorphone into Street circulation it has now never been cheaper or easier for children to get their hands on highly addictive and deadly opioids there are people using it you think even younger than grade 10. I see 14 13 year olds using hydromorphone like sometimes even 12 year olds it’s like I hate saying it out loud because it’s like you almost don’t want to believe it like it doesn’t seem real at all but it’s so real I am now seeing much younger people than I’ve ever seen in my life I even had a 15 year old patient who is in grade nine tell me he started when he was in elementary school and what kind of opioid to this it would have been Dilaudid at the direction of our federal government Hydromorphone has flooded our streets and into the pockets of our children did you think it was safe and your friends yeah yeah 100 um me like being young trusting the pharmacy and assuming this can’t harm me in the long run type of thing um and it wasn’t the case at all no we would see patients come in for for fentanyl use disorder and now come 2023 about half of our new intakes are addicted to Hydromorphone I saw it coming I hoped it would never get into the high schools but um yeah she came through our doors and I almost felt like crying it was like my nightmare came true did it seem weird to both of you that I mean this is notionally brought in obviously a safe Supply as part of harm reduction do you feel like it’s creating more harm 100 110 most people who are using this have never tried drugs before this like not opioids or anything like that so it’s just straight to the opioids like it’s definitely creating a lot more addicts than there was before how did this happen how did we find ourselves in this dystopian reality well according to Marshall Smith this all began with another medically prescribed opioid Oxycontin so this really started with with a company called Purdue Pharmaceuticals they are widely credited for you know for these actions they doctored the research that went into the safety and effectiveness of their product they infiltrated the medical Regulators they did everything that they could to get their product you know into the hands of uh into the hands of patients and of course because there was so much of it you know going out under the street dealers would get it and remarket it you know which is which is often what’s happening with these safe Supply drugs now after Decades of Devastation the BC government launched a class action lawsuit against Purdue Pharma for their role in fueling the BC addictions crisis but ask yourself how is government-funded safe Supply any different than Purdue selling of Oxycontin especially when you consider that Dilaudid the brand name for the Hydromorphone currently being distributed by the government is manufactured by the exact same company you saw all of the damage that was created by Oxycontin in the community hydromorph is two to three times stronger than Oxycontin uh strong and stronger than Oxycontin for sure so so this is a way bigger you know issue but Oxycontin caused the problem in the first place yes so the government went after Purdue yeah kind of took their pill bottles off the street and then are supplying a drug that is basically the same except even more powerful yes so they’re doing the same thing today that they are currently suing these companies for doing 10 years ago except except the drugs more powerful the drug is more powerful yeah it hasn’t even sound real saying this but like I have patients who for a reason that they became addicted to opioids was because one time their doctor prescribed them Oxycontin they got hooked so I have those people who are now getting this prescribed safe Supply they’re selling to other people who are just going to end up in this same thing like it’s just this circle during the huge ramp up of Legally produced clearly labeled consistent quality prescription opioids more Americans and Canadians died of those legally produced opioids then died in World War one and World War II combined and that was that is very very recent history we got here from companies saying this same line of reasoning you know don’t be opioid phobic we’re going to prescribe these very generously we’ll give them out in the community in all kinds of ways at a much higher level than we ever have and because they are FDA approved or approved by you know Health Canada they’re safe and you know millions of people got addicted hundreds of thousands of people died and we still have people dying from those medications today including by the way a number of people who are dying from Street fentanyl if you follow back their story they started on one of those you know allegedly safe you know opioid prescriptions I started using um Percocets and then yeah I just kind of went downhill after that right I was like sleeping in alleys or sometimes I wouldn’t even sleep just because like when you go to sleep people steal your stuff so at night I’d like do a shot they’re called uh speed balls where you mix Fentanyl and meth together no what was kind of the first first one that first pill that you started doing the Percocet it was the Percocets grew up in a really good family both of my parents were together it was just the people I was hanging out with at the time had the drugs had the beans and after that first sign I just continued to want it it started off with Tylenol ones and when I no longer needed them I find I found that I was still abusing them and then from there it just kept going then Tylenol fours and then Percocets then morphine and then it went to fentanyl I remember one day I couldn’t even walk I found myself like crawling to use the washroom I don’t know how many times I had overdosed I probably overdosed maybe over 10 times yeah and did you did you have any close calls with with fentanyl oh yeah I’ve I’ve overdosed sleep more than 20 times really yeah I always thought that’s how I was going to die I was on the streets it even got to a point where my family like knew they were going to lose me like that where after you had overdosed like did you accept the fact that you just might overdose and die one day and that was just part of it or did you not think about that or I didn’t think about that yeah all I thought about was getting high really and what as someone who lived it like what would happen if you go back to when you were on the streets and they basically went and they offered everybody who was using fentanyl addicted to fentanyl a prescription for something like a Hydromorphone or or Oxys or or Percocets then they’ll never get out of that lifestyle that’s just telling them you might as well take your own grave we are creating something much worse than the opioid crisis that Purdue had ever started and one of the patients I have was not in the safe Supply program his neighbor was in the program she would sell him about 10 of her Dilaudid in a day so he was using all of the pills that he was getting and injecting those pills he is developed through injecting those pills and that was the only thing that he was injecting he has developed an infection low down in his spine and he right now is not able to use his legs at all right I’d be walking it they were giving out on me I was falling down easily and I’m thinking I’m why am I falling down so easily and you know over the course of a couple days I wasn’t able to walk anybody that I bought them from or that I saw with them was were typically they were using them intravenously okay we were definitely did that addiction really kind of take hold of you with Percocets or was it the later drugs that really right from Percocets yeah right from Percocets and they’re small they’re small amounts but it was all it took it’s not it’s a big deal changes a person’s life once just with one pill the harm I’m seeing to to individuals and to the community there is nothing that can justify that and I don’t know how much suffering has to occur to get that message out despite all the pain and suffering I witnessed on this journey it also became apparent that there was always light at the end of the tunnel that given the right supports and incentives in some provinces at least treatment was available and Recovery was possible I went to jail in 2019 and got out in 2021 and that was like my turn and point there is this it was either I go to jail or I go to detox because I had drugs on school property so I chose to go to the detox center I actually reached out for help one one day I knew someone who worked there I asked her if she can call the detox for me but I did end up going to detox that very same day these women were fortunate enough to have access to treatment and detox through Alberta’s recovery oriented system of care a treatment-centric approach to combating drug addiction that has been introduced and greatly expanded over the past four years and that stands and start contrast with the strategy of other provinces of Simply handing out free drugs it is now known around the world as the Alberta model what is the Alberta model well the Alberta model is a model based you know deeply on the belief that that governments Prime duty is to help its citizens restore themselves uh restore their self-agency and the model really is about uh eliminating barriers to access to care improving the quality of care that is there and utilizing you know everything in our Arsenal based on high quality evidence and that evidence is you know by and large you know around the world uh our model borrows bits and pieces from jurisdictions around the world like Portugal Switzerland Massachusetts and a lot of Alberta Ingenuity quite frankly that has gone into it like the Alberta model the Portuguese system is famous around the world but sometimes for the wrong reasons drug advocates in Canada often cite the fact that Portugal has decriminalized drugs while ignoring the more nuanced measures Portugal has taken to combat its addictions crisis a constant source of frustration for Stanford professor and expert in addiction Dr Keith Humphries they also added something which people don’t seem to know about in North America which is dissuasion commissions so it’s not that if you use drugs in Portugal no one says anything about it police can still grab you they take you to a commission it’s not there to hurt you but you know they do assess your case and they may say okay you know you don’t seem to have a problem but if they think you do they will say you need to go to this treatment program and they can put pressure on you and they can do some fines they would not throw you in jail but it’s a very clear message from the authorities that what you’re doing is not okay and we want you to change what Alberta is trying to do is it is it novel in the North American sense is it borrowing from what’s been happening in in Portugal or what’s your sense of what they’re trying to do in Alberta spit like like a one of those impressionist paintings you have to back up long enough to see the whole thing so first off it is in fact a system it’s a recovery oriented system of care so there instead of it being sort of the stepchild of the policy world where nobody wants to think about addiction we’ll build a few treatment agencies and that’s all we’re going to do it’s linked together prevention early intervention harm reduction treatment and recovery and across different sectors so it’s not just health and social welfare it’s education it’s criminal justice but that’s that is critical to the idea of building a system the second thing is it’s animated with a spirit of hope it is a recovery oriented system of care so the goal is not merely let’s try to modestly reduce overdose deaths and then we’ll call it a day the aspiration is way higher than that it’s saying we actually want people to get to the point where they’re in recovery so today in Alberta any person whether they’re rural or downtown Calgary where we’re at today anyone can call our toll-free number and get an assessment right now and get started on treatment today and so our median wait time for assessment and treatment in Alberta and basically every Community all across the province is zero days as part of the goal to extend treatment and recovery to all albertans who require it regardless of ability to pay Alberta has begun construction of 11 large treatment facilities spread out across the province and Red Deer the first such facility is almost ready to open a brand new building I was given a chance to tour with Marshall Smith Aaron this is the first of 10 large recovery communities that we’re building here in Alberta these are different than the sort of normal treatment centers which are short-term 28-day programs these facilities are large high capacity facilities where clients can come and stay for up to a year at a time it’s individualized care with full Medical Services in the morning rent you’re 75 beds 50 on the male side 25 on the female side separated they’ve got separate kitchens and people are going to be put through the work they’re going to have going to do the therapy in the morning and chores in the afternoon or vice versa they’re going to have to learn how to cook learn how to take care of themselves learn how to take care of the facility learn how to do some Community gardening maybe we’ll end up seeing some kind of farmers market there and we’ll be coaching people through how to develop the life skills so that they can get their individual agency back and then setting them on a pathway where they can pay it forward and help others I I think that that is a much more inspiring vision than than simply uh watching people slowly killing themselves which is I think what the alternative approach has been we don’t we won’t give up on people and they are healing communities but things are done in groups right and they live a very structured day in contrast to the pure housing model where people come in and they get a hotel room and that they can continue to use drugs in their hotel room and and there’s no structure to that I would say that that can be very dangerous and you know 75 percent of fatal overdoses occur at home on the living room floor so if you’re giving somebody a living room floor and you are allowing them to continue using drugs in your facility the chances are you’re probably going to find somebody dead instead of warehousing addicts in hotel rooms like the BC government these Alberta treatment facilities aim to build recovery communities sure well we call them recovery communities for a reason right because uh it isn’t just the treatment of addiction that happens here it is a reintegration into Community it’s a rebuilding of community uh when people are on the street um whether they’re in tent encampments or you know you see homeless people Gathering uh that they do that because that is their Community right that you know whether that Community is attractive to us or not is a relevant addiction is an illness of loneliness Despair and isolation and so the antidote to that is building facilities like this where people can come together where they’re not lonely where they’re not isolated and where they’re not in despair and the opioid vending machines here no opioid vending machines here no we’re gonna skip the opioid vending machines as a government We Believe very deeply that our job as government is to be the cheerleader in Chief we have an obligation to provide the tools facilities like this like we do and all kinds of other areas of Health Care to give the people of Alberta the best shot at recovery for this the Alberta model has received International attention hosting a global conference in 2023 to Showcase to the world its early success the last decade we’ve seen the issue [Music] need to be done in the criminal justice system and you’re bringing something that hopefully will get worldwide and fast now in Alberta first jurisdiction I think anywhere in North America any Albert in any time of day anywhere you live free of charge with no wait list can receive treatment on demand right and that is thank you thank you but not everyone is on board with the Alberta model particularly the advocates for safe Supply decriminalization and harm reduction in British Columbia some of whom have Financial incentives to ensure the Alberta model doesn’t succeed and the chief medical officer here in British Columbia came out and said that you know if you’re addicted to alcohol we’ve got Freeman basically that’s available to you but if you’re addicted to opioids you know you’re kind of out of luck and you’re going to be addicted to these things we’re just going to basically ease your suffering as much as possible so how does that make any sense um the chief medical officer and the chief coroner are not MediCal experts in terms of addiction and most of the things that they they are saying are parroting activists and advocacy groups I don’t really know what’s going on there but we don’t put any stock in that kind of narrative people have been recovering from this illness for generations for a hundred years uh and and they will continue to um I think it’s very irresponsible for people in positions like that to to say such things and and I’m not sure what they benefit from doing that after the pandemic with the new our new system you know coming on board fatalities in British Columbia have continued to increase and fatalities in uh in Alberta are sitting at about 50 percent of what British Columbia is at so you know we will continue in Alberta to continue to save lives and to build an effective system of care to get people healthy to help them regain their self-agency and to restore themselves to sanity uh and and that is what we will continue to do and that is what we are doing but where does my home Province at British Columbia go from here what happens if BC continues down the path of safe Supply and decriminalization where does it eventually end up well on the very last day of filming this episode I stumbled upon something I’ve never seen or heard of before even on the downtown east side so we’re here in Vancouver in the downtown east side and we’re just walking uh we’re actually here filming something else and we just came across a story and tracked down and there’s a new truck that’s just pulled up here that is selling presumably illegally but in plain sight cocaine crack MDMA heroin and Crystal math or some kind of methamphetamine so we’ve taken some some shots here not sure if anyone’s going to talk to us that’s presumably the line of people who are currently buying these substances I don’t see police or anything anywhere so not exactly sure what is going on but such is life in the city of Vancouver I think it opened this is the first day opening and I’m gonna buy some cocaine you think it’s mainly cocaine like people online are just a mix of everything some people are here for I would assume fentanyl oh or heroin right I don’t even know know I haven’t even really looked at the menus so I think moving away from fentanyl is the best thing of course you know once you start doing heroin fentanyl is the only thing that works for you right so that’s that’s why these people are you know zombied out on fentanyl um on the streets doing crime robbing people or breaking into breaking in businesses to support your habit you know if you’re a detriment to the community you know of course it’s a difference as we were about to leave three men approached me and said they had just seen Vancouver is dying the prequel to this film yeah yeah just like 25 minutes ago this is like a crazy like double coincidence where I was I was at homeless for five and a half years much like that guy who’s now in politics and uh Marshall Smith yeah yeah just a lot like him yeah right we put a lot of effort into keeping this one area very clean and then we have this going on right here yeah a block down the road we have a Recovery House treatment center and it’s uh right here is it kind of uh I mean weird to you that there’s like a block away from an addictions Clinic they’re just openly selling the same drugs how does that make you feel like it’s kind of insulting especially for people who are just trying to get in and then they they walk past they have to walk past us every day yeah addiction is a disease of loneliness and isolation that says we do not have a disease right it’s a disease of lore and without without recovery it’s it’s a field day out there foreign.