Juno News - Is this the MOST DEPRESSING city in Canada？ Exploring London, Ontario

00:00:00.000 And I started seeing very severe infections from injecting pills, primarily diverted, but even from people that were in the program.

00:00:08.440 A guy died right here underneath my window. I watched him over a period of days.

00:00:13.820 The people on the streets aren't getting the help they need. The businesses are barely surviving and the community is in despair.

00:00:20.020 Things have gone dramatically down.

00:00:21.580 London, Ontario, a city decimated by homelessness and drug addiction.

00:00:33.320 In 2016, the Intercommunity Health Centre here in London became Canada's very first safe supply facility.

00:00:40.780 So I guess you could call this city ground zero for Canada's so-called safe supply experiment.

00:00:47.020 Well, is anything about safe supply really that safe?

00:00:50.740 The truth is, not really.

00:00:53.560 Safe supply is when addicts will go to a facility like the one behind me and receive a prescription to take hydromorphone tablets.

00:01:03.220 These are a more potent heroin alternative opiate designed to provide addicts with a safer, non-toxic drug to take.

00:01:12.300 Addicts will receive their prescription for hydromorphone from a doctor inside this building

00:01:17.340 and walk across the street to Chapman's Pharmacy right here and they will receive their hydromorphone.

00:01:23.820 On its face, this policy makes sense.

00:01:27.140 But in reality, things are not working out as we were promised they would.

00:01:31.380 In fact, ER visits due to toxic drug overdoses have risen here in London and Ontario since 2016,

00:01:39.720 since the federal government began funding safe supply here in this city.

00:01:44.580 Diversion, the flipping of hydromorphone on the street for as little as $1 in exchange for fentanyl,

00:01:51.420 is also pervasive in this city, despite what activists and believers of this program like to say to the media.

00:01:57.540 Furthermore, there are people strung out here on every street corner, living in tents and in desperate need of shelter and assistance.

00:02:06.340 Every other store here in London's historical district is either boarded up or abandoned.

00:02:11.680 It is easily one of the most depressing places I've ever been to in Canada.

00:02:15.960 And that is exactly why I'm here.

00:02:17.360 We're here to talk with politicians, doctors and locals about whether or not London's embrace of safe supply drug policies

00:02:26.660 has helped this city or made things much worse.

00:02:47.360 So we are here with London Ward 4 City Councilor Susan Stevenson.

00:02:52.540 Susan, why don't you tell us just where we're standing right now in your city?

00:02:56.700 Yeah, so we're standing in front of the London Intercommunity Health Centre.

00:03:00.880 And this is in Old East Village in London, Ontario.

00:03:03.860 This is the, I believe, the first safer supply program started here.

00:03:09.220 It was piloted here.

00:03:10.120 And how has this, this organization in this building here changed the makeup of your community and your city?

00:03:18.320 Has it, how has it, how has it impacted life here?

00:03:21.320 Well, there's a lot of people who live in this area that attribute the decline that we've seen in this area to the start of that program.

00:03:29.080 So particularly the expansion of that program, because it started as a very small pilot and then it was expanded.

00:03:34.800 And at that point, if you talk to the residents around here, many of them are very upset about what happens

00:03:40.260 and the amount of diversion that happens behind Chapman's here in the parking lot.

00:03:44.620 Pill bottles found everywhere.

00:03:47.680 And it's very distressing to a lot of people that live here.

00:03:51.860 Is the city in support of this?

00:03:53.980 Does the mayor in City Hall, obviously you're not a fan of this program, but what does the city think of this program?

00:04:00.640 You know, to my knowledge, it hasn't come before City Council, not as long as I've been a councillor, at least.

00:04:07.760 So it's something that's talked about here, but I don't know what role the city plays, if any.

00:04:12.040 I don't know.

00:04:12.600 It's definitely something I'm going to be raising, because as we've heard about three more virtual safer supply programs starting up in London,

00:04:20.020 I'm going to be booking an appointment with our MP and asking Health Canada,

00:04:24.600 what say does the city have in what is being brought to our city?

00:04:28.400 How many of them, you know, we've got three within sight, three within sight.

00:04:34.780 And I think if it's having a negative impact on our city, we get to have a say.

00:04:39.300 Right, and just for clarification, this is where they will prescribe or they will write the prescriptions for hydromorphone

00:04:47.480 and for, you know, Dilaudid pills, the alternative, the opiate alternative.

00:04:52.960 But now there are virtual pharmacists writing virtual prescriptions?

00:04:58.840 Yeah, and my understanding is they're doing it at Chapman's Pharmacy.

00:05:03.360 They're also doing it at 528 Dundas, which is directly across from a high school.

00:05:07.680 And then in our downtown, like right at City Plaza.

00:05:11.580 And how can doctors, if it's a virtual meeting, how can they gauge whether or not this person is going to actually use these drugs

00:05:20.980 or just divert them like we've seen so much, so many people use these hydromorphone pills too?

00:05:26.980 Yeah, these are great questions that I definitely want to know.

00:05:29.400 And what is the capacity?

00:05:31.240 London Intercommunity Health Centre has 278 safer supply patients.

00:05:35.980 So 278 prescriptions every day.

00:05:39.320 How many are each of the others?

00:05:40.800 Is there a cap in a city?

00:05:42.100 Is there a cap in a radius?

00:05:43.640 We've got an elementary school only a block away.

00:05:46.700 We've got low-income senior housing here.

00:05:49.000 We've got newcomers.

00:05:50.220 We've got a residence.

00:05:52.760 And this is the main street of a business improvement association.

00:05:55.600 On the corner here is a shelter for female sex workers that is causing a huge problem for this neighbourhood. 0.98

00:06:02.880 And there's tents lined up all down the outside of it.

00:06:05.520 Right.

00:06:06.040 And there doesn't seem to be a commitment to the community that is here.

00:06:11.440 It's tragic.

00:06:12.120 It's tragic what we're seeing.

00:06:13.240 And I see so many women out here. 1.00

00:06:15.400 So what is this building here that we're coming up to?

00:06:17.780 So this is, it used to be a TD building, but it's vacant now.

00:06:21.120 Okay.

00:06:22.300 Wow.

00:06:22.740 It just, it seems to me that if the idea behind Safer Supply is that it will, it will,

00:06:30.460 it will eventually be able to get people off of these drugs by giving them a slower, not

00:06:35.060 a slower, but a smaller dose of a, of, of a drug and it'd be safer, then these things

00:06:40.900 shouldn't be happening.

00:06:41.600 And if this program started in 2016 and it's, it's 2024 now, I mean, I don't, I don't know

00:06:48.940 what it was like before, but this seems like it's having the opposite effect.

00:06:52.900 Yeah.

00:06:53.220 Well, this area was really, um, on the upswing until about 2018 and then things have gone

00:06:59.580 dramatically down.

00:07:00.800 But, uh, the truth is we're spending a lot of time and money in this city and we're not

00:07:07.440 helping anybody.

00:07:08.360 The people on the streets aren't getting the help they need.

00:07:10.680 The businesses are barely surviving and the community is in despair.

00:07:15.140 They can't go for a walk.

00:07:16.220 It's not good for their own mental health.

00:07:17.820 We talk about walkable neighborhoods and mental health, but, but where are we in terms of

00:07:23.440 creating a safe environment for people to go for a walk, go for a stroll, get outside,

00:07:27.800 even sit on their balconies.

00:07:29.140 Right.

00:07:29.280 People are concerned about what they're breathing in and the safer supply program is one of

00:07:34.620 the things that this neighborhood will tell you is a key problem.

00:07:38.700 Hi there.

00:07:39.220 My name's Dee Klinger.

00:07:40.140 I'm a property owner here in OAV.

00:07:41.620 I, uh, came to this neighborhood right before COVID in hopes of, uh, you know, turning it

00:07:46.340 around and regenerating it in London's historic artistic district.

00:07:49.760 What do you make of the situation that it's, uh, that it's facing right now?

00:07:52.580 There's a lot of trouble.

00:07:53.620 A lot of people are hurting and a lot of the support is being misdirected.

00:07:57.300 Um, I just feel like we're not doing what has to be done.

00:08:00.860 Why do you think there's been such an ideological commitment in this city to a, a policy of safer

00:08:07.360 supply when it looks as though it's clearly not working?

00:08:10.660 There's been, I mean, I'm not an expert, but from my view, the problem with safe supply

00:08:16.460 is that it's missing the shelter component.

00:08:18.600 So they provided the harm reduction, they're providing the drugs, but they're not providing

00:08:21.780 the shelter and the safety for these folks.

00:08:23.320 So they're left on the street to deal with their addictions.

00:08:25.560 Yes, they have the drugs to keep the pangs away, but none of the other supports.

00:08:29.920 Why that has become the status quo and acceptable to some people, and I don't understand that.

00:08:36.940 Some things are not working.

00:08:38.100 And this particular shelter, there's no open door to it.

00:08:41.920 You have to buzz at the back.

00:08:43.520 And it says right on their website that their goal is to empower females who identify as

00:08:52.980 female, who provide sexual service, to empower them and to do it with dignity and safety. 1.00

00:08:58.940 And their donation list includes lingerie, heels, makeup.

00:09:02.780 And it's not about not helping these vulnerable women who are homeless, addicted, and on our

00:09:09.640 streets, in all likelihood, not doing sex work by choice.

00:09:13.880 I want to help them, but is empowering them with those kinds of donation items and with sex 0.80

00:09:21.840 work is real work and people should be able to do it.

00:09:24.140 Is that really what the taxpayers of London are going to prioritize?

00:09:27.860 We do not have a women's homeless shelter.

00:09:30.640 So there is no other place for women to just go to be safe and just be with women. 0.97

00:09:36.460 Do you feel like living in this city is making your life more difficult?

00:09:43.020 Some of the shelters are making my life more difficult, that's for sure.

00:09:45.820 Why is that?

00:09:47.920 Because they don't really know exactly.

00:09:49.980 They're not trained properly in doing the things that they need to be doing, and they don't

00:09:54.560 follow any kind of protocol.

00:09:55.840 They just kind of make up rules as they go.

00:09:57.460 Have you seen London change a lot over the past few years?

00:10:00.880 So much.

00:10:01.920 So much.

00:10:03.200 I got four different reasons why I got kicked out of there.

00:10:06.320 But the last one was when I went and complained about my male roommate walking in while I was

00:10:10.440 changing, and there's even people that said that that was true, right?

00:10:15.340 And they kicked me out because they said that I complained about my roommate too much.

00:10:19.140 But did you say you were put into one of the tiny homes there with a man that you didn't know?

00:10:25.180 Yeah, so I was put in there with a man that I'd never seen before.

00:10:27.700 I'd never seen him down here before ever, or around here.

00:10:30.520 I'd never met him before or nothing, and he goes by three different names.

00:10:33.980 717 Dundas Street.

00:10:35.400 It needs to be investigated.

00:10:36.820 We can't make a comment, especially to True North Media and our city council.

00:10:41.280 But are females being paired up with males?

00:10:44.880 Can you confirm that that's happening or not?

00:10:47.100 You guys, you work for the city.

00:10:49.060 You can ask the city of London.

00:10:49.940 I will be because she was sharing a pretty impassionate story there.

00:10:55.180 So we're outside Unity Project.

00:10:56.880 So it's a homeless shelter system here in London, and if you recall, we just spoke with a woman who said she had been kicked out of this facility because she complained about being paired up with a male roommate who walked in on her while she was getting dressed.

00:11:11.680 So she complained about that, and then she was kicked out. 1.00

00:11:14.360 That was her side of the story.

00:11:15.760 We wanted to go to this shelter here and ask someone what their side of the story was.

00:11:21.920 And sure enough, there was a manager here who told us that he wouldn't be speaking specifically to True North Media or Councillor Stevenson here.

00:11:30.860 And then he eventually just abruptly walked off after refusing to answer whether or not this shelter, which is receiving city funding, is in fact pairing up females with males.

00:11:42.580 Something I don't think the city of London or London residents would be too happy to hear about.

00:11:48.280 There's been an addiction problem before they had the safe supply.

00:11:52.560 But it's always been here.

00:11:56.020 I don't think it's made it worse or better.

00:11:58.700 And inner community does help a lot of people, people with HIV and Hep C they have programs for.

00:12:05.720 And just things to do, like they have a lot of art programs and programs for Native people.

00:12:14.140 So it isn't just a safe supply.

00:12:17.020 And also it's a health outreach.

00:12:18.720 People can see nurses, see doctors that normally wouldn't go to a hospital.

00:12:25.360 So I think that it's good for people out here.

00:12:29.280 Regardless of what's going on with the safe supply, there's always going to be addiction.

00:12:34.120 That's what I think.

00:12:36.540 What are the things that you would like to see the city provide to people who are using a program like this?

00:12:43.920 What do you feel is missing?

00:12:45.240 Homes, apartments, lives to live.

00:12:49.460 There's a lot of homelessness here.

00:12:51.600 Way more than there's ever been before.

00:12:54.080 And I don't think they're addressing the issue.

00:12:56.540 Like there are some programs like where I live, it's called Indwell.

00:13:00.280 And they just made a whole bunch of apartments down here.

00:13:02.940 Or I'm up near Waterloo.

00:13:04.660 And they have some around the city.

00:13:06.620 And so they are making places for a lot of people to go.

00:13:09.680 But a lot of people don't qualify for what they want.

00:13:12.740 Sometimes it's for mental health, addiction, stuff like that.

00:13:17.200 They do.

00:13:17.940 But there's a lot of people.

00:13:19.360 I don't see people going anywhere, really.

00:13:22.240 Like I was lucky enough to get a place.

00:13:24.000 But I see a lot of people out here, and I've known them for years, who are still homeless.

00:13:28.640 You don't feel like the city is taking the situation seriously?

00:13:31.160 I don't think no.

00:13:31.920 No, I don't.

00:13:33.380 I don't think so.

00:13:34.640 What's interesting is actually, we didn't capture this on camera because this woman said she doesn't want to be on camera.

00:13:39.180 She came up to us and asked us if we had received consent to interview people on the street when they knew they were being interviewed.

00:13:47.200 She asked us why we were interviewing right in front of her facility and what we were trying to interview people about, what we were discussing.

00:13:54.420 Well, who could have thought we're discussing the state of the city because everywhere around this shelter seems to be destruction, decay, and addiction.

00:14:04.740 She doesn't even want us to report in this area.

00:14:07.580 She wanted us to move along.

00:14:09.360 She felt like she could, you know, control the media narrative about the situation going on in this city, that she didn't want us to be interviewing people outside of her facility.

00:14:18.160 I don't know what she's trying to hide or why she feels as though she can control what the media says in her city, but that's actually the attitude we've seen between activists who believe in safer supply, between activists who believe in harm reduction.

00:14:35.740 They take the attitude that they can actually control the media and control the political dialogue over these issues.

00:14:41.220 Where all of that came from, that attitude, I'm really not quite sure because the evidence says that none of it is actually working.

00:14:49.580 What do you make of how the city has been handling the homelessness and drug addiction crisis here?

00:14:54.340 Well, it's been haphazard from the looks of it.

00:14:59.860 The current situation seems to be that they're looking for kind of experimental ways to deal with it that haven't been really tried anywhere else.

00:15:11.220 And my perception is it's going to be very expensive and I'm doubtful as to the cost-effectiveness of some of the programs that they're looking at.

00:15:23.380 Currently, the city staff is putting forward an idea for an organized tent encampment.

00:15:33.820 To be established, we don't know, it's to be announced.

00:15:40.860 But what that seems to me is that they're out of ideas and that they're just throwing up their hands and putting forward the absolute worst case scenario.

00:15:52.860 It's just more tense in a different place.

00:15:55.640 We know that London was the first city in Canada, I believe, to have a safe supply facility, the London Intercommunity Health Centre, starting in 2016.

00:16:07.320 How has the introduction of safe supply in this city changed the city?

00:16:12.740 I can't really speak to that.

00:16:14.800 I'm not involved with the program.

00:16:16.500 I don't really see, I mean, it's hard for me to know who actually is on the program and who's not.

00:16:25.500 All I can tell you is that this neighborhood has a high level of drug use.

00:16:29.820 Has it improved since 2016?

00:16:31.340 I would say it's much, much worse.

00:16:35.400 And just to point something out, right here, just about a year and a half ago, a guy died right here underneath my window.

00:16:46.420 I watched him over a period of days.

00:16:48.700 I'd look out my living room window, I'd see him out here.

00:16:51.680 He hadn't moved for days and then eventually it was a coroner taking him away.

00:16:58.160 And that affected me deeply.

00:17:00.920 We had the opportunity to speak with London-based addictions doctor Sharon Koivu,

00:17:06.320 who told us that many doctors don't want to speak out about the issue

00:17:10.120 and also that the hydromorphone pills, Dilaudid, that are used in the safe supply program

00:17:16.160 can actually cause spinal infections and other infections.

00:17:21.040 So not only is the strategy not safe, the drugs that are being prescribed in safe supply,

00:17:28.220 according to Sharon Koivu, are not even safe themselves.

00:17:32.100 What I've seen since diversion happened, I guess a few things.

00:17:36.120 One is I first started seeing people developing infections from injecting the tablets.

00:17:41.820 They're meant to be swallowed.

00:17:43.100 And I started seeing very severe infections from injecting pills,

00:17:48.180 primarily diverted, but even from people that were in the program.

00:17:52.240 And the infections that I've spoken out the most about are infections of the spine.

00:17:56.400 And they are, I've been doing palliative care and addiction work for years,

00:18:02.860 but infections of the spine are probably the worst suffering I see because they're so painful.

00:18:09.700 If you think about a spine getting infected, that's your nerve center is being infected.

00:18:14.780 They're extremely painful, but I've also seen people develop permanent paraplegia,

00:18:20.420 so they can't walk, and even quadriplegia, so they're affected from the neck down.

00:18:24.820 It really depends on where their infection is.

00:18:27.760 And when I first started seeing this, people could really tell me that the only pill that they were injecting was Dilaudid.

00:18:36.280 So the risk of an infection has been something that I've taken very, very seriously.

00:18:41.240 The other thing that I've seen living in this neighborhood, living within a kilometer of intercommunity health,

00:18:48.820 where the main program started, when I first moved in in 2015,

00:18:53.920 I moved in knowing this might be an area where there was a supervised injection site.

00:18:58.820 I support harm reduction, and I have supported the concept of supervised injection sites.

00:19:05.080 But what I saw after the Safe Supply program started was I literally had patients tell me

00:19:13.840 they were leaving their houses, leaving apartments that they had to live in tents behind the pharmacy

00:19:20.280 where a lot of the diversion was taking place.

00:19:24.500 And living here, I saw that happen.

00:19:26.800 When I moved in, there were no encampments in that parking lot area behind that pharmacy.

00:19:31.680 And encampments have with them so many harms, not just for the neighborhood,

00:19:36.120 but certainly for the people that were living there.

00:19:38.340 There's no ability for cleanliness or ability to use washrooms.

00:19:45.620 So it became a very unsafe place that probably even contributed more to the infections that I was seeing.

00:19:51.660 Well, there you have it.

00:19:52.440 It's true that from the people we've spoken to here in London, from the doctors, the politicians, the locals,

00:19:57.300 and even the homeless people who are addicted to drugs, in many cases perhaps using Safe Supply,

00:20:03.520 the Safe Supply program is not working like we were told it would by activists and believers in the program.

00:20:10.040 We've been told that Safe Supply saves lives, but the data just does not back up that claim.

00:20:16.480 ER visits due to drug overdoses have actually increased in London since Safe Supply began.

00:20:21.880 London's overdose death rate is now above the provincial average here in Ontario.

00:20:27.600 Before 2016, before Safe Supply began here, it was below the provincial average.

00:20:33.640 The combination of these facts makes for a very bad equation.

00:20:38.000 And that is that this program here in London is not working as advertised.

00:20:42.760 Another strange fact about the Safe Supply and drug strategy here in London

00:20:47.660 is that there is a very tight control over the messaging.

00:20:51.000 A lot of people are afraid to speak out about this issue.

00:20:53.920 They're afraid to say how they really feel.

00:20:55.520 We've asked several business owners here if they would be willing to speak to us

00:20:59.480 about how London is tackling this issue, and they don't want to speak to us at all.

00:21:04.540 They seem afraid, and that was actually what they told us off camera.

00:21:08.000 The federal government believes in this policy.

00:21:11.260 They have doubled down on Safe Supply.

00:21:13.600 Whenever they're questioned about Safe Supply by the Conservatives,

00:21:16.380 they just chant the slogan that Safe Supply saves lives.

00:21:20.060 We are pretty fed up with this fight against evidence-based programs

00:21:25.440 that actually are saving lives.

00:21:27.440 So just stop it and save lives!

00:21:29.880 I wonder how many of them have come to London here

00:21:33.300 to see how their policy plays out every day on the ground affecting real people.

00:21:39.820 From London, Ontario, Harrison Falken.

00:21:42.280 How One Art You sovereign estado by theلاvel end of the day,

00:21:52.060 responsibly somethi.

00:21:56.600 Thank you.

Juno News - May 10, 2024

Is this the MOST DEPRESSING city in Canada？ Exploring London, Ontario

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript