by CAA | Mar 29, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Uncategorized
Sweden, the U.K., and Canada all experimented with providing opioids to addicts. The results were disastrous.
By Adam ZIVO
[This article was originally published in City Journal, a public policy magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. We encourage our readers to subscribe to them for high-quality analysis on urban issues]
CAA Comment
Although we cannot locate a source, the saying, ‘A Drug addict is made by the age of six’ has resonance.
It does not suggest children are addicted at that age, although sadly, some are. It points to the environment and upbringing that will influence later behavioural traits. These factors are neither social class nor ethnic based; every child is vulnerable.
It is this vulnerability that must drive us to a solution that at least minimises the adverse addictive behaviour. Drug addiction and even experimentation are learnt traits, so the vulnerability can be unlearned or at least mitigated.
Providing drugs under the ‘Harm Minimisation’ or ‘Safer Supply’ is not the answer as it perpetuates the drug problem, as overseas experiences have shown.
The difficulty in controlling the Drug plague by the time a person is addicted is too late and generally ineffective, so to invoke policies of ‘Harm Minimisation’ and or ‘Safer Supply’ is a recipe for disaster.
Encouraging those who are addicts to become clean has all sorts of barriers apart from the drug addiction itself; most are addicted to the drug lifestyle without responsibility or accountability, so even if they are supplied with safer drugs, their behaviour will be unlikely to change.
We need to focus on the young and provide coping strategies and resilience, the ability to say ‘no’ would be a good starting point.
In these difficult fiscal times governments face, they will have to be pragmatic and withdraw funding from ‘Harm Minimisation projects’ and ‘Safer supply approaches and instead develop a uniform strategy across the entire education system and support parents in their efforts to develop coping skills for their children as they grow physically and mentally.
This effort will take time to have an impact, but it will not only help prevent children from experimenting with drugs but also create a better learning environment, improving the academic standards of all children and leading to more constructive lives.
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Last August, Denver’s city council passed a proclamation endorsing radical “harm reduction” strategies to address the drug crisis. Among these was “safer supply,” the idea that the government should give drug users their drug of choice, for free. Safer supply is a popular idea among drug-reform activists. But other countries have already tested this experiment and seen disastrous results, including more addiction, crime, and overdose deaths. It would be foolish to follow their example.
The safer-supply movement maintains that drug-related overdoses, infections, and deaths are driven by the unpredictability of the black market, where drugs are inconsistently dosed and often adulterated with other toxic substances. With ultra-potent opioids like fentanyl, even minor dosing errors can prove fatal. Drug contaminants, which dealers use to provide a stronger high at a lower cost, can be just as deadly and potentially disfiguring.
Because of this, harm-reduction activists sometimes argue that governments should provide a free supply of unadulterated, “safe” drugs to get users to abandon the dangerous street supply. Or they say that such drugs should be sold in a controlled manner, like alcohol or cannabis—an endorsement of partial or total drug legalization.
But “safe” is a relative term: the drugs championed by these activists include pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl, hydromorphone (an opioid as potent as heroin), and prescription meth. Though less risky than their illicit alternatives, these drugs are still profoundly dangerous.
The theory behind safer supply is not entirely unreasonable, but in every country that has tried it, implementation has led to increased suffering and addiction. In Europe, only Sweden and the U.K. have tested safer supply, both in the 1960s. The Swedish model gave more than 100 addicts nearly unlimited access through their doctors to prescriptions for morphine and amphetamines, with no expectations of supervised consumption. Recipients mostly sold their free drugs on the black market, often through a network of “satellite patients” (addicts who purchased prescribed drugs). This led to an explosion of addiction and public disorder.
Most doctors quickly abandoned the experiment, and it was shut down after just two years and several high-profile overdose deaths, including that of a 17-year-old girl. Media coverage portrayed safer supply as a generational medical scandal and noted that the British, after experiencing similar problems, also abandoned their experiment.
While the U.S. has never formally adopted a safer-supply policy, it experienced something functionally similar during the OxyContin crisis of the 2000s. At the time, access to the powerful opioid was virtually unrestricted in many parts of North America. Addicts turned to pharmacies for an easy fix and often sold or traded their extra pills for a quick buck. Unscrupulous “pill mills” handed out prescriptions like candy, flooding communities with OxyContin and similar narcotics. The result was a devastating opioid epidemic—one that rages to this day, at a cumulative cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives. Canada was similarly affected.
The OxyContin crisis explains why many experienced addiction experts were aghast when Canada greatly expanded access to safer supply in 2020, following a four-year pilot project. They worried that the mistakes of the recent past were being made all over again, and that the recently vanquished pill mills had returned under the cloak of “harm reduction.”
Most Canadian safer-supply prescribers dispense large quantities of hydromorphone with little to no supervised consumption. Patients can receive up to 40 eight-milligram pills per day—despite the fact that just two or three are enough to cause an overdose in someone without opioid tolerance. Some prescribers also provide supplementary fentanyl, oxycodone, or stimulants.
Unfortunately, many safer-supply patients sell or trade a significant portion of these drugs—primarily hydromorphone—in order to purchase more potent illicit substances, such as street fentanyl.
The problems with safer supply entered Canada’s consciousness in mid-2023, through an investigative report I wrote for the National Post. I interviewed 14 addiction physicians from across the country, who testified that safer-supply diversion is ubiquitous; that the street price of hydromorphone collapsed by up to 95 percent in communities where safer supply is available; that youth are consuming and becoming addicted to diverted safer-supply drugs; and that organized crime traffics these drugs.
Facing pushback, I interviewed former drug users, who estimated that roughly 80 percent of the safer-supply drugs flowing through their social circles was getting diverted. I documented dozens of examples of safer-supply trafficking online, representing tens of thousands of pills. I spoke with youth who had developed addictions from diverted safer supply and adults who had purchased thousands of such pills.
After months of public queries, the police department of London, Ontario—where safer supply was first piloted—revealed last summer that annual hydromorphone seizures rose over 3,000 percent between 2019 and 2023. The department later held a press conference warning that gangs clearly traffic safer supply. The police departments of two nearby midsize cities also saw their post-2019 hydromorphone seizures increase more than 1,000 percent.
The Canadian government quietly dropped its support for safer supply last year, cutting funding for many of its pilot programs. The province of British Columbia (the nexus of the harm-reduction movement) finally pulled back support last month, after a leaked presentation confirmed that safer-supply drugs are getting sold internationally and that the government is investigating 60 pharmacies for paying kickbacks to safer-supply patients. For now, all safer-supply drugs dispensed within the province must be consumed under supervision.
Harm-reduction activists have insisted that no hard evidence exists of widespread diversion of safer-supply drugs, but this is only because they refuse to study the issue. Most “studies” supporting safer supply are produced by ideologically driven activist-scholars, who tend to interview a small number of program enrollees. These activists also reject attempts to track diversion as “stigmatizing.”
The experiences of Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Canada offer a clear warning: safer supply is a reliably harmful policy. The outcomes speak for themselves—rising addiction, diversion, and little evidence of long-term benefit.
As the debate unfolds in the United States, policymakers would do well to learn from these failures. Americans should not be made to endure the consequences of a policy already discredited abroad simply because progressive leaders choose to ignore the record. The question now is whether we will repeat others’ mistakes—or chart a more responsible course.
by CAA | Mar 27, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Uncategorized
Police are charging more drug dealers with manslaughter in fentanyl overdose deaths. But the shift is not satisfying everyone.
CAA Comment
This article raises very interesting concepts in relation to the management of criminals involved in the drug trade more broadly.
Canada is leading the world in making players in the drug scene accountable for their actions by charging dealers with manslaughter who sell drugs that ultimately cause a person’s death. We are unaware of any investigations of that nature into drug overdose deaths in this country; perhaps there should be.
Notably, there is a counterargument inferring that targeting low-level dealers but not charging those higher up the pecking order is not the right way to go. However, the higher you go, the more difficult it is and the greater chance of no success.
Again, the Canadians have used existing laws and some lateral applications rather than creating mayhem trying to enact new specific laws to deal with the problem.
We have seen here a lack of enthusiasm to use existing laws in creative ways to deal with a number of issues putting pressure on the Courts to deal with.
An ingrained attitude toward the Law, or more precisely, the legislation, by Law enforcement is very negative when it comes to its application. A can’t-do attitude prevails over can-do, a sign of law enforcement’s poor leadership.
Of course, arguing against targeting low-level dealers means that any impact on the drug market will be minimised, but targeting the low-level dealers will not only force those up the chain to slurry their hands to keep their trade alive as low-level dealers are removed, but their identity will be more exposed.
As we have argued before, the only way to deal with the Drug epidemic is to target the marketing model, damaging that deters the trade better than any prosecution, although targeted prosecutions must be part of that strategy.
Deterring customers is the primary objective of any disruption.
*****************
Four years ago, Tyler Ginn died of a fentanyl overdose at the age of 18. Tyler’s father found his son unresponsive in the bedroom of their Brooklin, Ont., home.
For Tyler’s mother, Gayle Fowlie, the pain of his loss remains raw.
“He was my kid that rode his bike to the store to buy me a chocolate bar on my birthday, you know?” she told Canadian Affairs in an interview.
Police charged Jacob Norn, the drug dealer who sold Tyler his final, fatal dose, with manslaughter. More than three years after Tyler’s death, Norn was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.
“I don’t think you can grasp how difficult going through a trial is,” Fowlie said. “On TV, it’s a less than an hour process. But the pain of it, and going over every detail and then going over every detail again … it provides details you wish you didn’t know.”
But Fowlie is glad Norn was convicted. If anything, she would have liked him to serve a longer sentence. Lawyers have told her Norn is likely to serve only two to four years of his sentence in prison.
“My son’s never coming back [and] his whole family has a life sentence of missing him the rest of our lives,” she said. “So do I think four years is fair? No.”
Norn’s case reflects a growing trend of drug dealers being charged with manslaughter when their drug sales lead to fatal overdoses.
But this shift has not satisfied everyone. Some would like to see drug dealers face harsher or different penalties.
“If we say that it was 50 per cent Tyler’s fault for buying it and 50 per cent Jacob’s fault for selling it … then I think he should have a half-a-life sentence,” said Fowlie.
Others say the legal system’s focus on prosecuting low-level drug dealers misses the broader issues at play.
“[Police] decided, in the Jacob Norn case, they were going to go one stage back,” said Peter Thorning, who was Norn’s defence lawyer.
“What about the person who gave Jacob that substance? What about the person who supplied the substance to [that person]? There was no investigation into where it came from and who was ultimately responsible for the death of that young man.”
Manslaughter charge
At least 50,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses since 2016. Last year, an average of 21 individuals died each day, with fentanyl accounting for nearly 80 per cent of those deaths.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. A dose as small as a few grains of salt can be lethal.
Given its potency, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned to manslaughter charges when a dealer’s product results in a fatal overdose.
A recent study in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society found that the number of manslaughter charges laid for drug-related deaths in Canada surged from three cases in 2016 to 135 in 2021.
Individuals can be convicted of manslaughter for committing unlawful, reckless or negligent acts that result in death but where there was no intention to kill. Sentences can range from probation (in rare cases) to life.
Murder charges, by contrast, require an intent to kill or cause fatal harm. Drug dealers typically face manslaughter charges in overdose cases, as their intent is to distribute drugs, not to kill those who purchase them.
Joanne Bortoluss, a spokesperson for the Durham Regional Police, which charged Norn, said that each of their investigations follows the same fundamental process.
“Investigators consider the strength of the evidence, the dealer’s level of involvement, and applicable laws when determining whether to pursue charges like manslaughter,” she said.
The Canadian Journal of Law and Society study also found that prosecutions often target low-level dealers, many of whom are drug users themselves and have personal connections to the deceased.
Norn’s case fits this pattern. He struggled with substance abuse, including addiction to fentanyl, Xanax and Percocet. Tyler and Norn were friends, the judge said in the court ruling, although Fowlie disputes this claim.
“[Those words] are repulsive to me,” she said.
The Crown argued Norn demonstrated “a high degree of moral blameworthiness” by warning Ginn of the fentanyl’s potency while still selling it to him. In a call to Ginn, he warned him “not to do a lot of the stuff” because he “didn’t want to be responsible for anything that happened.”
Fowlie’s outrage over Norn’s lenient sentencing is compounded by the fact that Norn was found trafficking fentanyl again after her son’s death.
“So we’ve killed somebody, and we’re still … trafficking? We’re not worried who else we kill?” Fowlie said.
Trafficking
Some legal sources noted that manslaughter charges do not necessarily lead to harsh sentences or deterrence.
“If you look at how diverse and … lenient some sentences are for manslaughter, I don’t think it really pushes things in the direction that [victims’ families] want,” said Kevin Westell, a Vancouver-based trial lawyer and former chair of the Canadian Bar Association.
Westell noted that the term “manslaughter” is misleading. “Manslaughter is a brutal-sounding title, but it encapsulates a very broad span of criminal offences,” he said.
In Westell’s view, consistently charging dealers with drug trafficking could be more effective for deterring the practice.
“What really matters is how long the sentence is, and you’re better off saying, ‘We know fentanyl is dangerous, so we’re setting the sentence quite high,’ rather than making it harder to prove with a manslaughter charge,” he said.
Trafficking is a distinct charge from manslaughter that involves the distribution, sale or delivery of illicit drugs. The sentencing range for fentanyl trafficking is eight to 15 years, Kwame Bonsu, a media relations representative for the Department of Justice, told Canadian Affairs.
“Courts must impose sentences that are proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender,” Bonsu said, referencing a 2021 Supreme Court of Canada decision. Bonsu noted that aggravating factors such as lack of remorse or trafficking large quantities can lead to harsher sentences.
‘Head of the snake’
Some legal experts noted the justice system often fails to target those higher up in the drug supply chain.
“We don’t know how many hands that drug goes through,” said Thorning, the defence lawyer.
“Are the police going to prosecute every single person who provides fentanyl to another person? Jacob [Norn] was himself an addict trafficker — what about the person who supplied the substance to him?”
Thorning also questioned whether government agencies bear some responsibility. “Is some government agency’s failure to investigate how that drug came into the country partly responsible for the young man’s death?”
Westell, who has served as both a Crown prosecutor and criminal defence lawyer, acknowledged the difficulty of targeting higher-level traffickers.
“Cutting off the head of the snake does not align very well with the limitations of the international borders,” he said.
“Yes, there are transnational justice measures, but a lot gets lost, and as soon as you cross an international border of any kind, it becomes incredibly difficult to follow the chain in a linear way.”
Bortoluss, of the Durham police, said even prosecuting what appear to be obvious fentanyl-related deaths — such as Tyler Ginn’s — can be challenging. Witnesses can be reluctant to cooperate, fearing legal consequences. It can also be difficult to identify the source of drugs, as “transactions often involve multiple intermediaries and anonymous online sales.”
Another challenge in deterring fentanyl trafficking is the strong financial incentives of the trade.
“Even if [Norn] serves two to four years for killing somebody, but he could make a hundred thousand off of selling drugs, is it worth it?” Fowlie said.
Thorning agreed that the profit incentive can be incredibly powerful, outweighing the risk of a potential sentence.
“The more risky you make the behaviour, the greater the profit for a person who’s willing to break our laws, and the profit is the thing that generates the conduct,” he said.
A blunt instrument
Legal experts also noted the criminal justice system alone cannot solve the fentanyl crisis.
“Most people who have [lost] a loved one [to drug overdose] want to see a direct consequence to the person that’s responsible,” said Westell. “But I think they would also like to see something on a more macro level that helps eliminate the problem more holistically, and that can’t be [achieved through] crime and punishment alone.”
Thorning agrees.
“These are mental health .. [and] medical issues,” he said. “Criminal law is a blunt instrument [that is] not going to deal with these things effectively.”
Even Fowlie sees the problem as bigger than sentencing. Her son struggled with the stigma associated with therapy and medication, which made it difficult for him to seek help.
“We need to normalize seeing a therapist, like we normalize getting your eyes checked every year,” she said.
by CAA | Mar 25, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Youth
Many plaudits are attributed to the crime solution proposed by the new bail laws. Herald Sun 20th March 2025.
Although the changes are welcome and will have a positive impact, they are highly unlikely to be the ‘silver bullet’ hoped for. Short-term reprieve for victims is welcome, but long-term gains will still be challenging.
The Bail law changes are akin to taking to a massive pile of ‘record crime’ with a teaspoon rather than a decent frontend loader. The pile will grow quicker than the solutions applied.
What is misleading is the role of Bail or Remand; they are ostensibly mechanisms to ensure a person charged with a crime appears in court to answer the charges.
What was lacking was the consideration of community safety. It was a disappointing omission, but how the judiciary interprets these changes will be interesting to watch.
That a perpetrator has a propensity to continue offending after being granted bail makes the continuation of bail unacceptable. Therefore, the perpetrator must be remanded in custody, no ifs, buts or excuses.
Being held in custody preceding a court appearance to answer the charges is not a punishment for a crime; punishment is the judiciary’s role when the case is determined.
The problem we are facing, which needs urgent remedial attention, is the length of time juveniles, or, for that matter, anybody is held in custody without being convicted of the charges they face.
There is no doubt that for very serious capital crimes, the period in detention would vary dramatically for a juvenile charged with lesser offences.
The solution to this problem lies with the courts, which seem very inefficient. They spend most of their time remanding or considering applications for bail and procedural matters rather than getting on with hearing cases.
By the time a juvenile gets to have their case heard; the time on remand is predominantly deducted as part of the penalty, meaning that after the finding of guilt, there is generally little in the way of punishment that the judiciary applies.
This again sends the wrong message to the youths; they can claim they didn’t get a penalty for their indiscretion, and it then gives them bragging rights.
This issue must be resolved before we achieve meaningful inroads into reining in juvenile crime. And that is before long-term strategies that address anti-social behaviour before it develops.
Changes the CAA propose will further strengthen the process and reduce even further the likelihood of an innocent youth being incarcerated for a lengthy period and negate the much-argued proposition that putting juveniles in jail will make them worse.
Any harm done will be minimised if the remand periods are much shorter, providing less opportunity for youths to learn from other detainees. Careful management of these facilities will further reduce adverse impacts on those on remand.
Remand periods must be reduced to days or weeks, not months; whatever needs to be done to achieve this must be done immediately – no excuses.
by CAA | Mar 23, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Youth
The CAA has a strong record of accurately predicting future developments, like the current youth crime tsunami, years before it blossomed to its current levels. However, the impending disaster brewing causes the CAA members to lose sleep.
Daily, in all media, there is an indisputable increase in people, professionals, and concerned citizens, from parents to shopkeepers, speaking out like never before about the criminal behaviour of our youth and the visceral behaviour of young people.
One of the most plausible reasons for this negative growth of criminal and anti-social behaviour amongst youth was identified by Psychologist Maria Ruberto, reported in the Herald Sun on 23rd of March 2023.
Roberto identifies a failure in resilience at the core of many issues facing young people. The inability to make rational or informed decisions or any decision at all, including saying no, provides the environment for young people to be swept up in anti-social and criminal behaviours, which groups predominantly undertake.
As she points out, the parents have a lot to answer for in over-protecting young people, avoiding the necessity for them to develop reliance.
However, it is not just the parents to blame because much of this lack of resilience has been planted in their parents by the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the government took away the ability of all citizens to make their own decisions.
Rather than being informers, providing guidance and combating resources, the Government made decisions for everybody and enforced them with the Police.
The real impact of this incompetent management of the Pandemic is only starting to be felt; there is more to come, a lot more.
Identifying the issue is only the start; dealing with it is the real challenge.
Unfortunately, it seems that those with influence see only one solution, as detailed recently by the Youth Commissioner,
“Instead of sweeping laws to toughen bail tests, we want to see investment in assessments, interventions and supports that will tackle the drivers of each child’s offending and effectively support rehabilitation.”
The Commissioner is not alone; she has supporters of this hollow mantra, predominantly academics by profession and performance, claiming that her approach is the way to solve the problem.
The problems with this approach are that there are never any practical programs to deliver, an approach that has failed us for two decades and that the words never contain purpose, direction or action. This approach is an academic fantasy wish list that nobody will ever implement because the proponents are not actually or morally accountable, and there is no evidence that this approach will even work.
Pontification of itself is never a solution.
At best, we can, with care, devise strategies that will slowly change the prevailing youth behavioural demise. We cannot wait longer; the longer we wait, the more entrenched this behaviour becomes.
The CAA is exploring the establishment of a Youth Justice Advisory Panel consisting of pragmatic solution-orientated community leaders who together can design a plan to address the problem. Developing solutions that are pragmatic, effective and affordable to implement.
Holistically approaching the issue and providing consistency in the delivery of a program across a swathe of youth ages will be the key; the message must be consistent from preschool to secondary and beyond, with community initiatives developed to help guide children to adulthood.
The real challenge will be in developing new and innovative ways to deliver the required services and harvesting the positive aspects of all the current players in this space.
Parallel to this approach, strategies must be developed to equip parents to understand better their child’s development needs and coping strategies to assist them.
As important as a focus should be on children, the focus must be equally shared with parents and those in our community charged with interacting with children, whether in law enforcement, education or social development.
The proposed Panel could provide input to the Government, which is ultimately responsible for this issue and must act irrespective of ideological views; we cannot afford the luxury of those views hindering outcomes of value.
We envisage the Panel not being numerically large, quality rather than quantity, and representatives with a high profile from a broad cross-section of the community.
Established and operated by people who care.
The CAA would like anyone interested in participating as a Panel member to lodge their details and a summary of their credentials at ceo@caainc.org.au.
Let’s get this done.
by CAA | Mar 20, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Youth
As predictable as night follows day, all the pundits have raised their heads in condemning locking serious juvenile offenders up on remand to ensure they face court for their alleged crimes while preventing the commission of further crimes.
Be under no illusion the chances of a 10-year-old being held on remand is next to zero, as is any child. A child will have to do more than commit just one offence before the new bail laws take effect, remembering that the vast majority of young people coming before a court have already received multiple formal cautions by Police under the police diversion strategy before Police charge them and take them to court for repeated offences.
Although they may have committed more than one offence and received multiple cautions, they come before the Court as a first offender, and the cautions are not used against them.
A proper reform would be for the Police Cautions to be included in the matters put before the judiciary when deciding penalties or applications for bail – the judiciary should be fully informed.
It is not the locking up that is the problem per se; it is what is done in the management of juveniles in detention, and that needs a considerable shakeup or perhaps the complete removal of current practices on the basis they have and will continue to fail.
It is often said that to lock up a child will make them worse, but worse than what?
If they come out of detention worse, there is only one culprit: poor management of the child while detained.
The pundits reported on in The Age, March 16, are the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Victoria‘s Principal Commissioner for Children and Young People, Liana Buchanan, and the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Meena Sing. If they round out the people the government relies on for advice, it is no wonder we are in despair with the youths.
There would be grave doubt that any of these people had ever dealt with recidivists, so their opinion is purely academic and void of pragmatism because they don’t know.
However, the real standout was Victoria‘s Principal Commissioner for Children and Young People, Liana Buchanan, and Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Meena Sing, who were motivated to issue a joint statement.
“We understand that Victorians want to feel safe and that particular cases profiled in the media have impacted that sense of safety,” they said. “However, we are concerned the bail reforms proposed by the Victorian government will radically increase the number of children remanded in custody and will not make the community safer.
This may also indicate where the problems are for young people.
These two allegedly esteemed bureaucrats took the tried and tested method of deflecting responsibility by blaming the media,
‘…the particular cases profiled in the media have impacted that sense of safety’, they said, referring to the community angst.
Sorry, but it is not the media causing the mayhem; it is those children supposedly represented but government agencies who cause the lack of safety in the community.
The alternate view of these laws reeks of defending failed functions.
Followed by
“Instead of sweeping laws to toughen bail tests, we want to see investment in assessments, interventions and supports that will tackle the drivers of each child’s offending and effectively support rehabilitation.”
Sadly, those quoted and like thinkers have followed this path for a decade or more, and where that has got us? Because of this fanciful failed approach, hundreds, if not thousands, of children, have lives ruined and the lives of many other citizens because pragmatic and effective strategies have not been employed.
There is an urgent need to improve the standard of care while children are in detention to make the experience of value to them so that they may see the error of their ways. That does not mean enjoyable.
The discipline they need to make their way in society must be foremost in their learning.
Above all else, understand the Bail Laws are not talking about a sentence where the child must stand to account for their misdeeds, but Remand, is a process to ensure they attend Court for their hearing and lose the right to bail because of their continued offending creating the need to protect the community.
It was also reported that for
“Jacinta Allan, Police Minister Anthony Carbines, Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny, Department of Justice Secretary Kate Houghton and a dozen or so ministerial and departmental advisers, it was a long weekend of a very different kind.
All day Saturday, Sunday, Labour Day Monday and right up until midday on Tuesday when Cabinet was due to meet to consider proposed changes to Victoria’s bail laws, this working group was sweating over the final shape and details of the reforms”.
The Ministers could have saved the sweat by getting a new lot of advisers, as this current lot were not helpful.
It was also reported that,
“A current Senate inquiry into youth justice cites Victoria as an exemplar jurisdiction because it incarcerates children at a lower rate than any other state in Australia. The inquiry heard evidence that on any given night, there were on average 88 children in detention in Victoria, compared to 240 in NSW and 317 in Queensland”. – The Age
This is the problem exposed. Not only is it a fallacy to assume that there is less of a crime problem in Victoria, we know there is not; however, a more useful statistic would be the number of children on remand and their recidivism rate after their legal matters are resolved.
It would be helpful to know how effectively we manage these youths and provide the opportunity to improve the process dramatically. The current regimes are failing, encouraging the judiciary not to use the process, an easy out.
This is either plain old, everyday incompetent groupthink, or worse, telling the government what they think they want to hear.
Either way, if this is the quality of the advice the government relies on, then no wonder where we are where we are with Youth Crime.
Each of these people or organisations identified should hang their collective heads in shame for getting our miscreant youth where they are.
Unfortunately, until some accountability for performance is introduced to this process, nothing will change – contributors and decision-makers are never responsible for the outcomes they promulgate.
by CAA | Mar 17, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
The CAA applauds the belated ban on edged weapons (Machetes) and, like every other Victorian, demands that the ban be immediate.
There is no plausible excuse for a delay.
That a ban was not in place a long time ago beggars’ belief; however, the belated action that will take nine months before coming into effect is absolutely ridiculous; just what are the government planners thinking?
Haven’t they worked it out? It is not the weapon that is the problem. It is the idiot holding onto it.
If they seriously think that the perpetrators who use these weapons are going to show good community responsibility and put their prized weapons and symbols of power into a bin, the government planners are delusional.
For goodness’ sake, these weapons are status symbols that will disappear under their bed, not in a government bin.
And they will be replaced by Mum’s stainless-steel carver.
The Government needs to realise that banning the products altogether will only develop black market trading in the items, playing into the current black market (organised crime) marketing strategy – identify what the market wants, and if it is illegal, go for it.
This strategy works for the crooks, creating unintended consequences, as happened with tobacco. The weapons will probably be sold under the counter from the same shops.
The solution is banning the carrying of edged weapons of every description and giving the Police additional powers to search and seize, supported by mandated penalties to force the anthropomorphic magistracy, where coincidently many of our society ills are created because of their ineptitude, to undertake their role to keep us safe.
It’s not the weapon but the environment where it is located.
Mum’s stainless-steel carver could be the weapon a person is charged with possessing.
At 2.00 am, with a group of mates, the carver is as lethal as a machete and attracts the same status.
If care is not taken, the kitchen arsenal will replace the machete, and we will be no better off. The blades may be shorter, but the victim is just as dead.
It is not anti-social to own an edged weapon, but as soon as it is carried in a public place, the rules change; it’s not the weapon; it is the intended use, intimidation, attack or defence that is the issue.
When the planners grasp that concept, then they might come up with an effective solution like reviewing current legislation and, where necessary, tweaking it to provide the Police with the capacity to properly address the issue rather than being hamstrung by nice restrictive policies sponsored by the socialist elite.
Starting to think of the Police operational necessities (where the rubber hits the road) may go a long way to solving this issue.
Viewing this matter through a political prism will be the downfall of any efforts to curb unnecessary deaths and intimidation.
by CAA | Mar 15, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Uncategorized
CAA comment –
The risk of adopting paths to address the drug epidemic without proper scientific evaluation of strategies and not considering the impact of unintended consequences has bitten Canada big time. The hydromorphone experiment has caused greater harm than what the drug was intended to resolve.
We must be alert to these risks and not follow their lead.
A poorly researched strategy using hydromorphone as part of a drug treatment plan implemented in Canada has spawned a new market with addicts securing their hydromorphone treatments and selling them to purchase more potent drugs.
An addict can earn thousands of dollars by selling their prescription hydromorphone at a current street price of $2.00.
The $2.00 drug is the gateway for young people to enter the drug scene and risk addiction.
Australian drug issues are about to deteriorate further with a warning from the Border Force of Nitazenes, or Zombie drugs entering Australia.
If you thought that the behaviour of the current batch of drugs regularly used on the street was a risk the Zombie Drug will pale the current favoured drugs in potency and impact.
Our current Death rate from drug overdoses in Victoria is over 600 a year, already over twice the number of lives lost on our roads, which will skyrocket with Nitazenes entering the illicit market.
Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addiction physician with 30 years of experience, says Canada’s “safer supply” programs are “inherently dangerous” and causing “dystopian” community harms due to widespread fraud.
These programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by distributing free addictive drugs—typically 8-milligram tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin—to dissuade addicts from consuming riskier street substances. Yet experts across Canada say recipients regularly divert (sell or trade) their safer supply on the black market to acquire stronger illicit drugs, which then fuels addiction and organized crime.
“I have a couple dozen patients in my practice who were drug-free prior to the advent of safe supply, and they’ve gone back to using opioids in a destructive way because of the availability of diverted hydromorphone,” said Lester. “Every single day that I go to work, people tell me they’re struggling with the temptation not to take diverted safe supply. They don’t want to take it, but they take it anyway just because it’s cheap and available.”
After safer supply programs became widely accessible across Canada in 2020, Lester’s patients reported an influx of 8-milligram hydromorphone tablets on the black market, coinciding with a crash in the drug’s street price from $15–$20 per pill to just $2. He now estimates that 80 percent of his patients struggling with opioid addiction have relapsed due to diverted safer supply, leading some to abandon treatment entirely.
“Even if it’s sold at the rock-bottom price of $2 or $3 a pill, a person would make tens of thousands of dollars a year, which would have a tremendous impact on their ability to buy other drugs,” he explained. “Selling hydromorphone is too tempting not to do it, which keeps them entrenched in the whole world of dealing with opioid users and having opioids in their premises.”
Lester said safer supply is evidently “fueling organized crime” because drug seizures in Ontario now commonly include hydromorphone, “which wasn’t happening before.” He added that some individuals who try these diverted drugs later transition to stronger opioids, such as fentanyl.
In July, for example, the London Police Service announced that seizures of hydromorphone had increased by more than 3,000 percent in the city since 2020. According to London Police Chief Thai Truong, “Diverted safer supply is being resold into our community. There’s organized drug trafficking at the highest levels of organized crime, and there’s drug trafficking at the street level. We’re seeing all of it.”
While Lester acknowledges that safer supply can be useful as a “treatment of last resort, after traditional treatments have been tried and failed,” he said it is now being offered immediately to a wide variety of patients, which has “decimated” uptake of traditional addiction therapies, such as methadone and Suboxone.
As a result, conventional addiction clinics are now at risk of shutting down, meaning some communities could lose access to gold-standard treatments (i.e., methadone and Suboxone) while highly profitable, but unscientific, safer supply programs take over instead.
Lester said the evidence supporting safer supply is biased and “misleading” because, generally speaking, these studies simply interview enrolled patients and ask them to self-report whether they benefit from the programs. He noted that many safer supply researchers are public health academics, not doctors, meaning they lack clinical experience with the communities they study.
“It seems to be motivated by a very small, vocal, and well-connected group of advocates that has completely changed the landscape in addiction medicine treatment in a very short time,” he said.
Lester argues that some safer supply researchers seem to purposefully design their study methodologies to favor the programs and disregard systemic harms. He said this flawed science is then propagated by credulous journalists who fail to adequately scrutinize agenda-driven research.
While he personally knows “a couple dozen” colleagues in addiction medicine who regularly express skepticism about safer supply, many have been reluctant to speak out, fearing backlash from activist groups that “terrorize” critics.
“The stories are common of people being harassed and insulted on social media. We’ve heard of doctors being threatened [and] dropped from committees because they spoke out.”
For example, after Lester and his colleagues published two open letters criticizing safer supply in late 2023, they were targeted by a series of articles by Drug Data Decoded, a popular Canadian harm reduction Substack, which compared the doctors to Nazis and eugenicists. The articles were then widely shared on social media by safer supply activists.
Lester recalled an incident in which harm reduction activists targeted a doctor’s daughter at her high school in retaliation for her parent’s public criticism of safer supply.
“It’s just something that seems so unscientific and so bizarre in medicine,” he said. “Physicians just aren’t used to a powerful political lobby changing a treatment protocol.”
After Lester and more than a dozen of his colleagues wrote several public letters calling for reform and requested a meeting with Ya’ara Saks, the federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, they found themselves “sidelined and ignored.”
After months of delays, they were able to present their clinical observations to Saks, only to have her disregard them and incorrectly claim, weeks later, that criticism of safer supply is rooted in “fear and stigma.”
“The insults aren’t a big enough consequence to keep me from speaking my mind,” he declared.
After a short reflection, he then added, “If anyone doesn’t have a stigma against this population, it’s me. I’ve dedicated my life to helping them.”
by CAA | Mar 13, 2025 | Library, Politics, Youth
The vastly belated announcement by Victoria’s Labor Government of strengthened bail laws is welcomed. The Community Advocacy Alliance Inc. (CAA) warned ten years ago that Victoria would face a juvenile crime tsunami. We were ignored. Consequently, the number of victims of crime, and particularly of crimes of violence by juveniles has reached totally unacceptable levels.
The changes to bail laws and reintroduction of offences for criminal acts committed while on bail is a necessary move.
These steps are a government reaction to community pressure.
However, the real solution to juvenile crime can only come from the immediate introduction of proactive measures.
Every school must be required to immediately introduce a code of conduct for students. The standards of behaviour required must be clearly articulated and enforced.
A primary function of the school curriculum must be teaching the basics of good citizenship.
The CAA can provide the structure of a program, based on ten themes, which would make a real and lasting difference to the future behaviour of most students. This program should be delivered by police in schools. This format was very successful in Victoria from 1989 to 2006 as evidenced by a study by Monash University released in 2004.
We call on the Government to immediately take the next essential proactive step and reintroduce the Police in Schools Program. The CAA is willing to assist.
by CAA | Mar 9, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library
Health Canada launches two new drug detection units to fight fentanyl trafficking—but will they be enough?
CAA Comment
The insightful series of articles by Break the Needle gives an evolutionary overview of illicit drug use in Australia as we follow the patterns experienced in Canada.
Fortunately, the Canadian reality is, in our estimation, five years ahead of where Australia is now.
Unfortunately, our civic leaders tend to have their heads in the sand. They are blissfully hoping that the drug strategies that have been allowed to develop will somehow work in Australia, where they have failed miserably in Canada.
Whether it is the misuse of Harm Minimisation practices, allowing pressure groups to drive a pro-drug agenda or whether there is insidious pressure from the criminal element.
On the point of pressure on civic leaders from the criminal elements, we have no evidence to suggest that is happening, but we must be alert to the possibility, as the Illicit Drug industry is milking Billions of dollars from this illicit trade, so it is reasonable to presume that if the opportunity arises, the drug industry will exploit leaders for their own benefit.
Australia is not immune from clandestine laboratories manufacturing illegal drugs. Recently 178 charges were laid against 41 people after a Police raid on Labs in Biloela, Gladstone and Gracemere in Queensland. Herald Sun
Sophisticated Labs are here, generally used to manufacture Methamphetamine. But that may only be a step towards Fentanyl. The Crime Intelligence Commission (Aus) National Wastewater Drug Monitoring makes for an interesting read.
Of course, Governments will cry poor, but they must privately realise that fighting the war now and hard will have positive fiscal benefits in the future and may also save many wasted lives.
In October 2024, the RCMP dismantled the largest known fentanyl operation in Canada’s history. The fentanyl superlab was located on a remote, 66-hectare property in the forests of interior B.C.
In its raid, the police discovered black-market chemists were mixing massive quantities of precursor chemicals — some imported from China and others synthesized domestically. These chemicals had been used to produce some 54 kg of fentanyl.
Canadian authorities are now intensifying their efforts to stop the flow of precursor chemicals into Canada for illegal purposes.
On Dec. 17, Ottawa launched two new initiatives — the Canadian Drug Profiling Centre and the Chemical Precursor Risk Management Unit — as part of a broader $1.3-billion border security plan.
These new units represent an important step in addressing Canada’s growing drug crisis, sources say. However, it remains uncertain how effective they will be in confronting the rapidly evolving drug trade.
Flow of drugs
In the late 1990s and early 2010s, opioids like OxyContin were widely prescribed in North America, leading to widespread addiction and misuse.
In the early 2010s, Canada and the U.S. introduced stricter regulations to limit opioid prescriptions, making pharmaceutical opioids harder to obtain.
As access declined, many individuals with opioid dependencies turned to heroin as a substitute, fuelling a heroin epidemic in the early to mid-2010s.
By 2016-2017, fentanyl had largely replaced heroin in the illegal drug supply due to its lower cost, higher potency and the ease of smuggling it. Chinese manufacturers played a key role in supplying synthetic opioids like fentanyl to North America.
In 2019, under pressure from the U.S. and Canada, China imposed strict controls on fentanyl exports, disrupting the supply of ready-made fentanyl to both countries.
Yet the drug market adapted quickly.
A 2021 Canada Border Services Agency briefing document revealed a growing trend in Canada’s importation of precursor chemicals, fueling the rise of homegrown fentanyl production.
That same year, authorities in Australia busted their largest-ever illicit fentanyl shipment hidden in industrial equipment sent from Canada — proving Canadian fentanyl production was not limited to serving a domestic market.
By 2023, the RCMP had publicly confirmed Canada had become a producer and exporter of fentanyl.
“Sadly, Canada is a producing country of fentanyl and synthetic opioids,” Mathieu Bertrand, chief superintendent of the RCMP’s Serious and Organized Crime & Border Integrity Unit, told reporters in November 2023. “Not only are we a producing country, but we’re also an export country.”
Bertrand suggested this shift indicated either a surplus of fentanyl in Canada, or that organized crime groups operating in Canada had identified more lucrative markets abroad.
During the October 2024 lab bust in B.C., RCMP said production levels far exceeded demand from local consumers, suggesting it was being manufactured to meet foreign demand.
A June 2024 briefing by Global Affairs Canada to the House of Commons revealed that U.S. authorities were seizing Canada-produced fentanyl in the U.S.
Inside the drug superlab in Falkland, B.C., after being discovered by RCMP on October 31, 2024. (RCMP)
Smuggling methods
In response to a request for comment, the Canada Border Services Agency acknowledged the rise in imports of precursor chemicals.
“Over the last few years, the [Canada Border Services Agency] has seen an increase in the importation of precursor chemicals for the domestic production of illegal drugs,” agency spokesperson Jacqueline Roby told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
Roby said the agency already uses tools such as handheld devices, X-ray machines and detector dogs to intercept shipments at the border.
Marie-Eve Breton, an RCMP media relations officer, said the task of finding precursor chemicals becomes very difficult if they are not intercepted at the border.
“Once the regulated chemicals have entered the country, it becomes more difficult to investigate as no legislative tools exist to address the illegal possession,” Breton told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
But she also noted the difficulty of intercepting products at the border.
“Precursor and essential chemicals can be easily mislabelled and smuggled into the country,” she said. “Often, these chemicals enter Canada legally to support industry in the production of legal goods and products available for domestic use and international trade.”
Precursor chemicals such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, for example, have legitimate uses — such as to produce pharmaceuticals and fertilizers — but are also used to produce methamphetamine.
Similarly, acetic anhydride is used to produce products like perfumes and aspirin, but is also essential in fentanyl production.
New drug units
The recently launched Canadian Drug Profiling Centre and Chemical Precursor Risk Management Unit will strengthen government efforts to intercept and respond to precursor chemicals. The RCMP and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police are working with Health Canada to set up both units.
The Canadian Drug Profiling Centre will focus on analyzing synthetic drug samples seized by law enforcement. The centre will use chemical markers to trace substances back to their production source, identify manufacturing methods and potentially locate criminal networks.
“The analysis will help to identify trends and patterns to inform on the origin, distribution, and manufacture patterns of the drugs [and] profiling analyses will help better understand how distributors and drug dealers are changing or modifying the drugs,” said Tammy Jarbeau, a media relations advisor for Health Canada.
According to Jarbeau, the centre will support up to 2,000 investigations annually.
The Chemical Precursor Risk Management Unit will monitor and assess precursor chemicals seized at the border and through law enforcement operations.
If evidence shows that a “precursor is being detected at the border or used in clandestine laboratories,” it will trigger a scientific assessment by Health Canada to determine whether the substance should be classified as an emerging precursor chemical, said Jarbeau.
Drugs that are classified as chemical precursors under federal drug regulations can be regulated, monitored and restricted to help law enforcement better address illicit drug production.
Health Canada is proposing legal amendments to list equipment that are used in the production of illegal drugs, such as tablet presses and capsule filling machines.
Jarbeau says the proposed amendments would also require companies such as pharmacies and veterinary clinics to report suspicious transactions, conduct background checks for personnel handling precursor chemicals and limit sales of certain precursors.
But the illicit drug trade is mercurial, especially for fentanyl.
“The potency of fentanyl means that many fewer clandestine laboratories are required to produce a given supply … As a result, there are many less fentanyl labs, which makes them easier to conceal and harder to identify for police,” said Wright of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
“Sophisticated organized crime groups are well versed in police tactics and investigative methods.”
by CAA | Mar 2, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Politics, Safe Injecting Rooms
“The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission will move from its Richmond office as fears grow for staff after a rise in anti-Semitic messages, and assaults and verbal abuse from users of the nearby injecting room.” Anthony Templeton Herald Sun Feb 27, 2025.
‘Oh diddums, how terrible what the poor employees of VGCCC must put up with during their working day, but hang on, their working days are predominately at home, aren’t they?
Unlike the residents of Richmond, they only need to expose themselves to the reality of drugs spasmodically. The rest of the Richmond residents deal with this issue 24/7 without respite.
Located right next door, within 15 meters of the Richmond North Primary School, things are so bad locals have advised the CAA that children at this Primary School are exposed to addicts engaged in sex acts from their classroom window at the back of the MSIR and Prostitutes are a common site plying their wares in the vicinity of the MSIR.
Moreover, the children are exposed to experiences no child should endure because the Medically Supervised Injecting Room MSIR, or more correctly, the Safe Drug Injecting Room, ‘safe’, meaning beyond the Law, not the illicit product drug users inject, so close to the school the children cannot avoid interaction with drug users.
The absolute hypocrisy of Government is laid bare, with the residents and traders of Richmond left holding the bag and suffering the impact of the Richmond Injecting room without respite. At the same time, the Government packs up the bags of the VGCCC to relocate it to a more salubrious area away from the disgusting behaviours and lawlessness of Richmond.
Moving the VGCCC because of the Injecting room nearby, some 500 meters or ½ mile away, and the environment in the vicinity of the MSIR, which is overrun with addicts and anti-social behaviour, threatening the safety of VGCCC staff, is an outright admission that the Government has failed the community.
500 meters from the VGCCC compared to 15 meters for a Primary school and 20 meters from residents’ homes. It would be much more practical to repurpose or move the injecting room. It would also be substantially cheaper than moving a Government Department.
The move will be costly and disrupt the operations of the Department. With the State under financial pressure, it would be a whole lot smarter to save an expensive move and use those funds to repurpose the injecting room into an outreach drug treatment facility or a drug triage centre to manage addicts.
The government has already spent $14m on upgrading security, which is not good enough for the VGCCC. They would instead be relocated to the CBD.
VGCCC chief executive Annette Kimmitt, as reported in the HS, said,
“Feedback from staff (including our most recent People Matter survey) reflects growing fear for personal safety while at work and when travelling to and from the office,” she said in the letter.
“We continue to witness and experience other anti-social and criminal activity, including drug and alcohol-related violence, drug dealing and other intimidating behaviour.
“Colleagues have witnessed the brazen exchange of cash for drugs, people injecting drugs near the building and subsequently large numbers of dangerously discarded syringes.”
Ms Kimmitt said increasing anti-Semitic material – such as graffiti, posters and stickers – was also creating an unsafe environment.”
To ‘add insult to injury’, Ms Kimmitt was also reported as saying.
..“Our relocation will impact the many hardworking small businesses, particularly the food outlets that rely on our foot traffic,” she said.
To rub salt into the wound the condescending sympathy expressed by Kimmitt is well ‘beyond the pale’.
In a State ‘crying poor’, to spend the money on relocating an entire Government Department simply because the vicinity of their offices is not to their liking is an absolute disgrace.
We guestimate that this move will cost the taxpayers $100’s of Millions of dollars by the time the new digs have a bespoke fit-out, all the VGCCC technology hardware is relocated or replaced, and all the other costs incurred, including the properties to be vacated or occupied.
We note that Ms. Kimmitt was not forthcoming about a budget for the exercise.
Yarra Mayor Stephen Jolly also weighed into the debate, claiming a dedicated plan to revitalise the area was needed, with more police, financial support for existing businesses and a plan to attract new traders.
“What we are seeing is a ghetto in the making, and we have to stop it; a Disneyland for drug users has been created,” he said.
Unfortunately, the good Mayor is promoting the relocation of the MSIR; however, relocating, an easy option, will not contribute to the lowering of the number of users who die and the disquiet that the community suffers. It will be suffered elsewhere with another community.
There is no good place to have an MSIR. However, there are plenty of places for a Drug user’s resource where the primary function is to ensure their addiction is addressed, not just facilitate their continued addiction, the function of the MSIR.
It is inevitable that wherever it is relocated, the problems will only follow.
Closing this MSIR and re-allocating the MSIR operating costs to bespoke drug management centres should be the strategy to clean up Richmond. A zero-tolerance approach by saturation Policing will encourage users to vacate the area and, without the magnate of an MSIR elsewhere, will move back to their normal local. Dispersing the addicts will damage the Dealers who are the major and only beneficiary of attracting users to one location.
Although there is a myth that surrounds the MSIR that it reduces deaths from overdoses, the Coroners Annual Reports paints a different picture.
The latest Coroners figures reveal that in Victoria, there were 601 deaths in 2024, the highest recorded spike in deaths since the 550 recorded in 2022, two years after the MSIR was opened.
So, the MSIR has had no appreciable impact on reducing deaths – it is a failed strategy.
To rely on MSIR figures is problematic as it uses figures for the Local Government Area, which is disingenuous because the majority of the drug users frequenting the MSIR and its surrounds are not locals but from other areas. Many of the people overdosing at the MSIR or vicinity are transported to hospital, where they are declared dead. Therefore, the place of death is registered outside the Yarra LGA, fudging the figures.
Victoria spends Millions of dollars annually to reduce road deaths with some success. However, the educational approach cannot succeed without parallel initiatives to ensure that our road infrastructure and vehicles are safe and road laws are enforced.
During 2023 in this State, the road toll was 282, and with 601 Drug overdose deaths in the same period, over twice as many lives were lost to drugs. Yet expenditure on addressing the drug problem is so minimal as to be close to non-existent.
Governments are ignoring the drug problem, hoping it will go away, influenced by those who promote illicit drug use as a recreational activity and any intervention as a breach of the freedom of choice. That same twisted logic would remove all speed restrictions and leave vehicle speeds to the driver’s freedom of choice.
The most disturbing part of the death comparisons is the value our governments put on a life.
A drug user’s life is worthless compared to a road user.
It is well past time that the government takes some responsibility for the drug epidemic and invokes strategies that have an impact, not just indulge in occasional talkfests.
The current cost of the drug epidemic, and history shows it will continue to spiral downward, should be motivation enough to take serious action, but not, as governments continue to be swayed by the failed Harm Minimization strategies without the supporting fragments of the Three Pillars strategies.
It is past time that involuntary treatment was introduced as a cornerstone of the approach to drug use, and while the opponents to such a move scream, ‘What about the person’s rights?’.
Their right to life should transcend their other rights; they can have them back when they are well.
by CAA | Feb 26, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Politics
The US has had a drug czar for decades. Experts share how this position has shaped US drug policy—and what it could mean for Canada
CAA Comment-
While the concept of a Drug czar has some merit, we are loath to promote and create another arm of government unless there are compelling justifications. The cost of establishing an effective Czar concept would outweigh the benefits, and the money would be better spent on new initiatives on the demand side of the drug trade.
The risk of the czar concept is that it can be too easily manipulated for political gain rather than effectively addressing the problem. We have already seen in Australia how the pro-drug lobby and sympathisers have hijacked and promoted Harm Minimisation that has not contributed to a reduction in drug use. There is, however, an argument that Harm minimisation has had the opposite effect by providing quasi-support for drug use and providing users with justification for their behaviour.
The CAA strongly believes in a two-pronged strategy: the users, or the demand side, are subjected to strict law enforcement backed up by non-voluntary intervention to address the users’ health issues.
While not turning a blind eye to the supply side, the most effective method to damage the supply trade is to reduce the demand, and in Austria, the Demand side is driving the unfettered expansion of the drug trade.
The present settings ensure the end users are treated like expendable fodder, feeding the drug lords’ insatiable appetite for wealth and power.
Every step to reduce demand adversely impacts the drug trade, driving down drug prices.
The drug scourge can only be managed by the principle of market forces.
The current strategies have not worked and never will. The sooner they are dumped the better for the community and drug users alike.
Last week, Canada announced it would appoint a “fentanyl czar” to crack down on organised crime and border security.
The move is part of a suite of security measures designed to address US President Donald Trump’s concerns about fentanyl trafficking and forestall the imposition of 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods.
David Hammond, a health sciences professor and research chair at the University of Waterloo, says, “There is no question that Canada would benefit from greater leadership and coordination in substance use policy.”
But whether Canada’s fentanyl czar “meets these needs will depend entirely on the scope of their mandate,” he told Canadian Affairs in an email.
Canadian authorities have so far provided few details about the fentanyl czar’s powers and mandate.
A Feb. 4 government news release says the czar will focus on intelligence sharing and collaborating with US counterparts. Canada’s Public Safety Minister, David McGuinty, said in a Feb. 4 CNN interview that the position “will transcend any one part of the government … [It] will pull together a full Canadian national response — between our provinces, our police of local jurisdiction, and work with our American authorities.”
Canada’s approach to the position may take cues from the US, which has long had its own drug czar. Canadian Affairs spoke to several US historians of drug policy to better understand the nature and focus of this role in the US.
The first drug czar
The term “czar” refers to high-level officials who oversee specific policy areas and have broad authority across agencies.
Today, the US drug czar’s official title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The director is appointed by the president and responsible for advising the president and coordinating a national drug strategy.
Taleed El-Sabawi, a legal scholar and public health policy expert at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., said the Office of National Drug Control Policy has two branches: a law enforcement branch focused on drug supply, and a public health branch focused on demand for drugs.
“Traditionally, the supply side has been the focus and the demand side has taken a side seat,” El-Sabawi said.
David Herzberg, a historian at University at Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y., made a similar observation.
“US drug policy has historically been dominated by moral crusading — eliminating immoral use of drugs, and policing [or] punishing the immoral people (poor, minority, and foreign/traffickers) responsible for it,” Herzberg told Canadian Affairs in an email.
Harry Anslinger, who was appointed in 1930 as the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, is considered the earliest iteration of the US drug czar. The bureau later merged into the Drug Enforcement Administration, the lead federal agency responsible for enforcing US drug laws.
Anslinger prioritized enforcement, and his impact was complex.
“He was part of a movement to characterize addicts as depraved and inferior individuals and he supported punitive responses not just to drug dealing but also to drug use,” said Caroline Acker, professor emerita of history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
But Anslinger also cracked down on the pharmaceutical industry. He restricted opioid production, effectively making it a low-profit, tightly controlled industry, and countered pharmaceutical public relations campaigns with his own.
“The Federal Bureau of Narcotics [at the time could] in fact be seen as the most robust national consumer protection agency, with powers to regulate and constrain major corporations that the [Food and Drug Administration] could only dream of,” said Herzberg.
The punitive approach to drugs put in place by Anslinger was the dominant model until the Nixon administration. In 1971, President Richard Nixon created an office dedicated to drug abuse prevention and appointed Jerome Jaffe as drug czar.
Jaffe established a network of methadone treatment facilities across the US. Nixon initially combined public health and law enforcement to combat rising heroin use among Vietnam War soldiers, calling addiction the nation’s top health issue.
However, Nixon later reverted back to an enforcement approach when he used drug policy to target Black communities and anti-war activists.
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Nixon’s top domestic policy aide, John Ehrlichman, said in a 1994 interview.
Michael Botticelli, Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy March 7, 2014 – Jan. 20, 2017 under President Barack Obama. [Photo Credit: Executive Office of the President of the United States]
Back and forth
More recently, in 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Michael Botticelli as drug czar. Botticelli was the first person in active recovery to hold the role.
The Obama administration recognised addiction as a chronic brain disease, a view already accepted in scientific circles but newly integrated into national drug policy. It reduced drug possession sentences and emphasised prevention and treatment.
Trump, who succeeded Obama in 2016, prioritised law enforcement while rolling back harm reduction. In 2018, his administration called for the death penalty for drug traffickers, and in 2019, he sued to block a supervised consumption site in Philadelphia, Pa.
Trump appointed James Carroll as drug czar in 2017. But in 2018 Trump proposed slashing the office’s budget by more than 90 per cent and transferring authority for key drug programs to other agencies. Lawmakers blocked the plan, however, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy remained intact.
In 2022, President Joe Biden appointed Dr. Rahul Gupta, the first medical doctor to serve as drug czar. Herzberg says Gupta also prioritised treatment, by, for example, expanding access to naloxone and addiction medications. But he also cracked down on drug trafficking.
In December 2024, Gupta outlined America’s international efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking, naming China, Mexico, Colombia and India as key players — but not Canada.
Gupta’s last day was Jan. 19. Trump has yet to appoint someone to the role.
Canada’s fentanyl czar
El-Sabawi says she views Canada’s appointment of a drug czar as a signal that the government will be focused on supply-side law enforcement initiatives.
Hammond, the University of Waterloo professor, says he hopes efforts to address Canada’s drug problems focus on both the supply and demand sides of the equation.
“Supply-side measures are an important component of substance use policy, but limited in their effectiveness when they are not accompanied by demand-side policies,” he said.
The Canada Border Services Agency and Health Canada redirected Canadian Affairs’ inquiries about the new fentanyl czar role to Public Safety Canada. Public Safety Canada did not respond to multiple requests for comment before publication.
El-Sabawi suggests the entire drug czar role needs rethinking.
“I think the role needs to be re-envisioned as one that is more of a coordinator [across] the administrative branch on addiction and overdose issues … as opposed to what it is now, which is really a mouthpiece — symbolic,” she said.
“Most drug czars don’t get much done.”
by CAA | Feb 23, 2025 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
Speaking with police to try to understand the application of Proactive, Reactive, Broken Windows, or Zero tolerance policing philosophies really depends on which Police member you speak with. They will all have knowledge or an opinion, but the confusion starts when it comes to examples.
Adding to the confusion, the CAA has spoken to many senior Police, and even they can’t agree or have little understanding of the concepts, so what hope has the Constable on the street have of implementing a coherent Policing philosophy for Victoria’s Force?
On this front, the chances of the public knowing are next to zilch.
Put simply, proactive policing prevents crime, while reactive policing deals with crimes already committed.
Proactive policing
Proactive policing is often maligned and misunderstood, seen by many as the soft option and ineffective by avoiding the harsh reality of policing.
Arguably the most effective method of Policing, it cannot be successful without a Reactive function in support, not the other way around.
The assumption that Proactive policing is avoiding arrests is a long way from the reality of a good proactive strategy. A far better policing approach is needed, given the reluctance of courts to manage recidivists adequately.
The best way to understand the Proactive reactive dilemma is through examples.
One proactive strategy is instigating Police patrols in the community, which are frequent but unpredictable and highly visible. They must be conducted so that the community can become accustomed to the Police presence and can rely on the presence to become part of the community fabric. While 24-hour patrols would be challenging to manage, having frequent patrols on multiple days every week would improve community confidence. This is where proactive policing is most effective – preventing crime before it happens.
Amongst the best examples of proactive projects were the formal Police In Schools Program (PSIP), Operation New Start and the Blue Light Disco. Frontline police developed the latter two and were not top-down initiatives, which added to their success. To deal with particular children, the three initiatives work together: Operation New Start working with the local Police member in the PSIP program to ensure the child gets to school, and Blue Light providing the child with entertainment and, if necessary, funding the child’s education.
There are a plethora of other examples ranging from working and building positive relationships with children of the next generation susceptible to unlawful behaviours to forms of communication with the community to reinforce compliance with the law as opposed to the vast majority of police resources applied to the reactive function where the police are isolated from the general public, either ensconced in vehicles (many with tinted windows) or police stations. There has been a substantial reduction in Police Station opening hours, and those that are open are neither welcoming nor convenient for the public, as security has been so overdone as to take the human factor out of Police Station interactions.
As history shows, the risk to police in a Police Station is extremely low, and the security should be commensurate with the risk.
Because the security levels are not commensurate with the risks, they adversely impact Service delivery, making it a chore to try to report a crime to a local Police Station. People are encouraged to report crime on the Police Advice line 113444- service efficiency at the cost-of-service delivery.
The phoned-in crime report has to be handled multiple times rather than the police member to whom the crime is reported at a Police Station taking responsibility for investigating the crime; the centralised reporting is inefficient writ large.
Reactive Policing
A reactive vehicle or foot patrol responds to a perceived or known threat to the community. It is usually targeted at a specific criminal or anti-social activity and is maintained until that threat is passed.
It is often spasmodic but fails to imbue confidence in the community over a more extended period.
We are not suggesting that reactive patrols are unimportant because they are sometimes essential, but not at the expense of proactive community patrols.
Of the Reactive strategies, probably the most contentious is the proliferation of Task Forces and special duties units, which, by design, are clearly Reactive because some criminal event/s motivates their creation and determines their function.
We were shocked to hear one of Victoria’s most senior executives claim that task forces are proactive and absolute rubbish.
Task Forces have an essential role to play, and there will always be a need for a number, but the reality in Policing in Victoria over the last decade or so is that inept leaders have automatically opted for a Task Force to solve the operational problems they face with little thought to the impact on the overall policing by removing police from the front line to fill the Task Force positions.
There seems to be a belief in the upper echelons of the Force that on most high-profile issues, where the community demands to see action, the most visible (and most straightforward) to quell community disquiet is to establish a Task Force.
A police pragmatist would see the Task Force approach, in many, but not all cases, as an inefficient use of police resources; a better approach would be to reduce crime from happening in the first place by maintaining an adequate number of Police on the front line.
Front-line members at the various Police Stations and Criminal Investigation Units providing face-to-face Police service to the community should be untouchable for other duties, not the first point of call.
Another problem with task forces is that they have no sunset clause, so they can run on for years and, in many cases, allow prime targets to continue their criminal activity uninterrupted. Targeting a crook to charge them with more serious crimes, or the equivalent of police nirvana, is sometimes ridiculous when prosecuting lesser offences more frequently will achieve a better outcome than THE BIG ONE.
The proactive patrols will still catch and charge perpetrators.
Broken Window Theory
A lot has been written about the Broken Windows policing philosophy, which was made famous because of its effectiveness in reducing crime in New York some years ago. The theory is as relevant today as it was when it was used in the US.
This approach has police intervening in all levels of social disorder and crime, and rather than drive or walk past anti-social behaviour; the police must intervene and, where an offence has been committed, charge the perpetrator and leave the Court to resolve the matter.
In criminology, the broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime, antisocial behaviour and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.[1] The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes, such as vandalism, loitering, public drinking and fare evasion, help to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling first introduced the broken windows theory in an article titled “Broken Windows” in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly:
The role of police management is critical, liaising with the appropriate authorities to keep on top of the visible signs of crime and antisocial behaviour brought to their attention by Police on the streets.
An argument that the Courts couldn’t handle an influx of minor offences is not a police problem. However, a Constable always has the discretion to issue a warning and should have the power to issue a notice to an offender to receive an official warning at a Police Station, irrespective of age. Failure to participate would automatically see the summonses or a Court Attendance Notice issued for the alleged indiscretion.
Zero Tolerance Philosophy
Of all the theories of Policing that are touted, this is one that we vehemently reject predominantly because it removes the Common Law discretion that a sworn Police Constable has to prosecute or not.
Without discretion, Police become robotic, void of compassion and their effectiveness would be severely diminished as the community would wholeheartedly reject this approach.
The CAA hopes that the new Chief Commissioner will rapidly bring the Force into balance between the Proactive and Reactive approaches, adjusting the pendulum to favour proactive policing by a small margin.
Making this change may be resisted by the uninformed, but it will be short-lived; as the adoption of proactive strategies starts to take effect, there will be positive reactions from the members. It does take a bit of time, but many of us have seen this before, as the conversion rate from reactive to proactive became a prominent strategy. The crime rate fell dramatically as the initiatives grew from the bottom up and started to have an effect.
To implement these philosophies, the Force needs to present an authoritative stance to the community, and we encourage the Chief Commissioner to dispense with the black (Salute Blue) uniform shirts allegedly designed to make the Force look tougher and return to the lighter blue shirts more consistent with other Australian police forces.
Reintroducing the compulsory wearing of the Police cap, the symbol of authority, will give the Force stature and rebuild respect in the Force.
A respected Force is an effective one.
by CAA | Feb 17, 2025 | Library, Politics, Youth
Victoria’s newly minted Opposition leader has wasted no time wading into the youth debate. His enthusiasm is palpable and very welcome, and clearly, he is a conviction politician who, in a leadership role, augers well for Victoria’s future.
His vision for improving the management of youthful offenders has a lot going for it, but he has missed a couple of keys that have got us to where we are today and must be addressed first.
The reality of the current situation in juvenile management is that we have seen the failure of overly punitive approaches of years past as we have seen the obverse where the perpetrators avoid accountability; both options are failures, so we need to look at why.
A significant factor is the inability of the ‘judiciary’ and ‘the system’ to recognise that they are dealing with children who have a totally different ethos from the youth justice system leaders and policymakers.
A key factor in the make-up of the youth psyche is the ‘here and now’ syndrome, where they live in the moment and do not overthink further than what they are engaged in. That only comes with maturity.
What this does is wind the clock, to time differently to adults. What may be a relatively short time for an adult can be an eternity for a child. To see how this works, offer a child a meal at McDonald’s in about 15 minutes. You can then observe their reaction as their time ticks by, as opposed to yours.
This time phenomenon must be used in the Judicial management of Juvenile perpetrators.
The other critical issue is accountability. Young people must be taught that any action that is not acceptable must have consequences if they breach community norms. Whether criminal or otherwise, if their behaviour is not corrected, then escalation is inevitable.
Most responsible parents will correct children’s behaviour from a very young age. Whether it is the parent’s fear of averting the child from danger or simply convenience, the parental approach must always include a consequence. Parents quickly learn that without a consequence, whatever that may be, the child’s behaviour will not alter.
The alternative ‘rational’ approach of some parents is where they think their young child will respond and understand a lecture on behaviour. Lecturing 3-4-year-olds in the centre of a Supermarket aisle is a classic that shows the parent’s ignorance and explains the child’s misbehaviour. Expecting a young child to rationalise like an adult is a major mistake.
The CAA agrees with the concept of diversion for young people but insists that there must be a backup plan to ensure the ‘consequences’ are applied to gain compliance. It is up to the child whether they are prepared to comply.
In Mr Battin’s approach, we are concerned about an eagerness to look overseas to seek a remedy. That will only provide an excuse for all and sundry within the Government to exploit the junkets rather than deal with the issue by applying lateral thinking.
The overseas experiences can be researched online without incurring the cost of being spent on a ‘solution finding tour’. Moreover, the experiences overseas were homegrown, which should also be our solution. The tendency to look elsewhere ignores the issue of cultural variations and, therefore, is unlikely capable of just being lifted and applied here and expecting a positive outcome.
The secret to success is to provide a plan that is simple, straightforward, and easy to implement in a cost-effective way that can be easily measured and easily modified to make inevitable necessary improvements measured against the pre-determined matrixes.
Using current government resources to avoid additional costs, the CAA proposal must be seriously considered.
by CAA | Feb 17, 2025 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
By Newton Reynolds – CAA Member
In the 1930’s Victoria Police was moribund, corrupt and inefficient.
Chief Inspector Duncan from the Met “FLYING SQUAD” in London was tasked with a review.
He arrived in Melbourne on 12 October 1936 and commenced his review. Even before he presented his report, he informed the Government that the matter was urgent.
He was appointed Chief Commissioner and reformed the Force into arguably the best in the World.
Since the appointment of Nixon as Chief Commissioner, the force has been in a terminal state of decline. Alexander Mitchell DUNCAN’s appointment drew howls of protest from police and politicians: “Why not a local?” the reason was “there were none capable and incorruptible”.
Therefore, the search for a replacement Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police should go international. The current crop of Assistants and Deputy Commissioners are politically tainted. The Lawyer X, Red Shirts, the Cardinal Pell witch hunt, COVID-19 overkill, the anti-Jewish failures, the two-tiered political policing, the list goes on. They form part of a failed command. Bring back Sir Ken Jones from the UK, remember the British Bobby who was white anted by then Chief Commissioner Simon OVERLAND, known as” the LANTERN”. “Bright but had to be carried everywhere”.
A fresh approach to move to traditional policing and removing the Government’s sticky political fingers from law enforcement.
Building Taj Mahal-sized centralised Police Stations instead of smaller community Police Stations which, from a policing perspective, are far more effective, efficient and welcoming in connecting with their community. Victoria Police has lost sight of its main function, which is the protection of life and property and the prevention of crime. The force has morphed into being a reactionary arm of Government Policy
The worry is the current crop of politicians do not have the foresight or the will.
Here’s praying the next appointment will not be some POLITICAL DOG BODY more likely to also fall foul of the Force members, appointed to satisfy the equality and diversity brigade but a strong, decisive Commissioner with runs on the board in law enforcement and not tainted by recent performance in Victoria.
The immediate resignation of Chief Commissioner Shane Patton will add to the woes of VicPol and is unlikely to be the circuit breaker the Government is hoping for.
The Government needs to provide a Mea culpa on many of its poor decisions if it has any hope of even having a small influence on improving its relationship with the Police.
Rick Nugent is a good man, but that may not be good enough to turn the tide, we wish him luck.
If he has any hope of turning the tide, he will need to first rout out the rabbits of the Senior ranks, and the Government must support him in that endeavour.
by CAA | Feb 13, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms, Victoria Police Issues
CAA comment
This is an important article by Break the Needle and is particularly insightful in exposing our risk factors about illicit Drugs.
It highlights the folly of looking at risk factors on imports from other countries and how they may be used as a drug conduit.
Canada would be seen as a friendly neighbour to the US, which shares much in common with its northern neighbour. It is not unlike the relationship between New Zealand and Australia, so it is very possible that our border security takes less notice of imports from across the ditch than those from other Asian and friendly European countries.
Trump has cleverly used Tariffs as a weapon to have US neighbours take appropriate action against Drug and people smuggling operations.
We do not doubt that Trump would accept any adverse retaliatory action with his tariff strategy to prove that he is not bluffing.
Depending on how this strategy plays out, Australia could become the epicentre of drug use as criminal gangs unable to access or with reduced access to the US market, look further afield for a suitable market and, given the high retail price of drugs in Australia that will be where they first look.
We can only hope that our legislators are a wake-up and prepared for any onslaught because if the cat gets out of the bag, trying to rein in any influx will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Make our borders drug proof or we all suffer.
Trump’s tariff threat has ignited debate over Canada’s role in fentanyl trafficking. Sources say Canada is a key player.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, caused a stir when he said Canada and Mexico could avoid 25 per cent tariffs if they stop fentanyl and illegal migrants from coming into the US.
“As far as I know, they are acting swiftly, and if they execute it, there will be no tariff,” Lutnick said at a US Senate Commerce Committee hearing.
Ottawa and several provinces have launched border security initiatives to respond to the threat of tariffs. However, there is disagreement over whether fentanyl trafficking is a legitimate issue in Canada.
Data and sources paint a complex picture. While the volume of fentanyl seizures is low, some sources indicate Canada is a hub in the global fentanyl trade.
‘Massive’
In his comments about drug trafficking at the Canadian border, Trump has focused on fentanyl specifically.
“The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive,” Trump said at a Jan. 21 press conference, where he reiterated his threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods.
Fentanyl claims tens of thousands of American lives each year.
In 2023, fentanyl and related drugs such as carfentanyl were responsible for an estimated 74,702 overdose deaths in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, making even minor border seizures significant. A potentially lethal dose is just two milligrams — roughly the size of a few grains of salt.
The U.S. Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations recorded the seizure of 19.5 kg of fentanyl along the entire US-Canada border in 2024. This is a tiny fraction of the nearly 10,000 kilograms of fentanyl seized across all US borders last year.
Of this haul, 9,600 kg was confiscated at the southern border with Mexico, where Mexican cartels are known for mass-producing the drug.
The Canada Border Services Agency seized just 4.9 kg of fentanyl between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, 2024. Of this number, 4.1 kg was intercepted before it could be smuggled overseas, specifically toward the Netherlands, agency spokesperson Jacqueline Roby told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement.
However, during this period, the agency seized about 21,500 kg of “other drugs, narcotics and precursor chemicals,” Roby said. Precursor chemicals refer to substances that are not explicitly identified as fentanyl but may include drugs and chemicals used in the production of fentanyl.
‘Limited to no evidence’
A spokesperson for the Ontario RCMP said Canada-produced fentanyl trafficking at the US-Canada border is not a significant issue.
“There is limited to no evidence or data from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. or Canada to support the claim that Canadian-produced fentanyl is an increasing threat to the U.S.,” the spokesperson said.
“Reports state fentanyl produced in Canada is being exported in micro shipments, most often through the mail. Micro traffickers are most often found on the dark web,” the spokesperson added.
David Asher, a former senior investigator with the US State Department, CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division, shared a different perspective during an August 2024 interview with Canadian investigative journalist Sam Cooper.
Asher cited evidence suggesting fentanyl trafficking operations in Canada are highly organised.
“When we looked at the telephonic communications of Chinese organised criminals that DEA arrested in the US [for drug trafficking and money laundering] … there was an extraordinary amount of communication with Canada,” Asher said in the interview.
“It seemed like they were being controlled out of Canada, and I’m happy to say that on the record. We seized these people’s cell phones, ran them, and saw who they called in Canada.”
Asher also cited a lack of cooperation between Canadian authorities and US agencies in verifying the scale and operations of fentanyl trafficking networks.
“There’s very good reason to suspect that Canadian command and control continues, at least for money laundering and a fair extent of fentanyl precursor exports from Hong Kong and other parts of China,” he said.
“We’ve just not had adequate cooperation from the Canadian government.”
In 2022, the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada reported that organised crime groups had shifted from importing fentanyl-related products to sourcing chemical precursors from both international and domestic suppliers to manufacture the drug within Canada. The service is an inter-agency organisation that shares criminal intelligence between police forces in Canada.
In a 2024 report on organised crime in Canada, the intelligence service confirmed the extent of organised crime’s involvement in drug trafficking.
“Serious and organised crime remains a prominent threat to Canada’s security, contributing to thousands of deaths annually from overdoses due to illicit drugs, as well as firearms and gang violence,” the report said.
The intelligence service reported that international organised crime groups are leveraging Canada’s geographic location and borders to facilitate the illicit movement of goods — including drugs like fentanyl — between North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
The agency also reported an increase in dark web trafficking, which may explain the increased use of micro shipments and the role of online markets in the fentanyl trade.
Reports from the Canada Border Services Agency show a ninefold increase in fentanyl precursor chemical seizures in Canada between 2020 and 2021. In the first half of 2021 alone, the agency seized more than 5,000 kg of precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, up from just 512 kg in 2020.
This transnational reach was further underscored in 2021 when Australian authorities intercepted their largest-ever illicit fentanyl shipment — more than 11 kg of fentanyl hidden in industrial equipment sent from Canada.
Nicholas Boyce, policy director at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, which advocates for drug policies focused on harm reduction and decriminalisation, is sceptical that border crackdowns will be effective in stopping the flow of illegal drugs and their precursors.
He pointed to the low inspection rate of sea containers at Canadian ports, often used to ship stolen cars.
A 2022 Canada Border Services Agency internal audit revealed that the agency’s target inspection rate is between just 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent. However, the agency has not met even this target in recent years. In 2021-22, the inspection rate was 1.1 per cent; in 2020-2021, it was 0.9 per cent.
“We cannot even stop stolen cars leaving the country — how can we expect to detect small packages of powders and chemicals?” Boyce said.
Editor’s note: This piece was updated to reference the 2022 report by the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, the reports from the Canada Border Services Agency that show a ninefold increase in precursor chemical seizures, and the information about the Australian authorities’ fentanyl seizure in 2021.
by CAA | Feb 7, 2025 | Investigations, Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
Police Deputy Commissioner Neil Paterson has conceded that the Police are frustrated by the leniency of the Victorian Bail Laws at a Stonington Police forum, as reported in the Herald Sun on the 7th of February 2025.
The Commissioner said that Victoria Police was advocating for change in the Court System.
It was reported that in a shocking admission by Deputy Paterson, “the force had never arrested more people for serious crimes than we have in at last 12 months.”
Nice of the Deputy to instil more fear into the community.
This admission, of course, did little to allay the community’s fears, but what is most alarming, according to the report, is that the only strategy presented to the community was the standard police line given to every such challenge of their performance.
“The policing panel announced increased foot and bicycle patrols to monitor areas including Chapel St in addition to existing initiatives to tackle crime.”
It takes a bit more than monitoring a crime hotspot, and the Zero Tolerance with the Broken Window Police strategy applied to these areas would be the most effective response.
Although a relatively short-term strategy, usually 6 months or so, the other areas of policing not reported as being discussed are proactive initiatives. The monitoring patrols, although proactive, are very limited without a broader application of proactive strategies that have a longer-term impact.
There is a major flaw in this announcement, as we have several CAA members facing similar concerns in their community and have been given the same hollow assurances. Patrols for a very limited period who do nothing more than monitor activity without enforcement, which is a ludicrous approach the community is heartily sick of.
Within a short time of these inevitably hollow assurances, the patrols diminish, while the problems persist, the police disappear completely, leaving the residents with no discernible difference in their ‘air of menace’, as one resident described the situation.
It is incredibly disappointing that the police command cannot come up with any new approaches and blaming the Courts and Bail Laws while admitting there are multiple parts to the Justice system and trying to shift all the blame on to the Justice system is disingenuous when police are clearly failing in their primary function. Preventing Crime.
by CAA | Feb 5, 2025 | Library, Media, Politics, Victoria Police Issues
Victoria can be forgiven for collectively exercising a sigh of relief at the announcement by the Allan Government about Bail Laws, Herald Sun 4th February 2025, but relief may well be premature until we see the new plans because we are not hopeful that the Government has seen the light and is proffering a solution to the worst crime rate in Victoria’s history and this may not be the silver bullet of Victoria’s hope.
The government only appears to view the problems through a narrow prism which will not lead to solutions that altering the Bail Laws is promoted to achieve.
We are not confident because the Premier has called an ‘immediate review’. Yes, that is the get-out-of-jail card so often brandished by politicians in a corner.
Pardon our scepticism, but we have seen all this before. No meaningful outcome will be achieved as the people called upon to conduct this review are the same people who advised the government on the ‘New’ crime laws passed into legislation less than six months ago that achieved little if any positive impact; at least, there is no noticeable change in the way the Courts or Police are operating that is visible.
The probability is not high that a new review by the same people and departments will expose how they got it all wrong last time.
What will happen is that the review outcome will exonerate the previous architects; the new review will see to it.
The irony is that the Premier does not even recognise the problem she is supposed to be dealing with.
There is no argument from us that the Bail Laws must be tightened, as must the judiciary’s discretion, as they will find ways to bypass possible changes to the Law.
And yes, if this is done correctly, we will see an improvement in the Law-and-Order space, but we cannot be complacent, as the crime issue will not be addressed by one magic (or not-so-magic) bullet.
All the changes in the Bail Laws may be thwarted by the judiciary, who have all seemingly overindulged in the Restorative Justice cool-aid.
The review must include how the independence of the judiciary can be retained while complying with any new strategies introduced.
Judicial accountability would be a good start.
Of equal importance is an understanding that crime prevention is the most cost-effective strategy to reduce crime. Stopping crimes happening first rather than dealing with the miscreants after they commit crimes makes absolute sense, but that does not sit well with some ideological advocates.
Seen often as the soft option, in Police parlance, Proactive policing is the only strategy shown to work.
The power of police foot patrols interacting with the community regularly is one of the most underrated weapons in the Police arsenal, but Victoria Police would instead put resources into the plethora of Task Forces and any other groups that are targeted at a particular crime after the event. We believe there are literally thousands of Police tied up in special target groups at a State and local level.
There will always be a need for some Task Force groups. Still, VicPol has become so addicted to them that they see no other alternative strategy, and there is no evidence that the Task Force approach actually works. With a rising crime rate, it is highly improbable they have any impact on the overall crime, only spasmodic impact on particular offenders who immediately get bail anyway, so the Police Task Force has been a waste of time.
Victoria has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that recently developed strategies in combination promote /facilitate crime, not reduce it.
As we have pointed out previously, children do not enter this world with an ingrained criminal disposition; all criminal values are taught, so early intervention in a child’s development is critical, and the formative Primary School Years are the logical target area if a difference is to be achieved.
If a large percentage of police resources dedicated to Task Forces were redirected to early intervention, we would see a dramatic decline in crime.
Police performing their proper function would also see the Force attracting more recruits and retaining those they have.
The Premier would do well to ask the community what strategy they would prefer.
After all, they have to live with the consequences of whatever is implemented- this review must focus on Service Delivery as their guiding principle.
by CAA | Feb 4, 2025 | Library, Politics, Victoria Police Issues
CAA comment
This article, with comments submitted by James Basham, will be of great interest to the majority of our readers as it identifies quite clearly how the government is bereft of effective strategies to deal with terrorism and has headed down the path of a system that is loosely based on the failed Restorative Justice approach to problems in our society.
The Government really need to secure pragmatic thinkers who are not distracted by ideology to focus on how to best manage radicalisation in our society.
Critically, as this author points out, there is an absolute need for whatever system or strategy is adopted it must not bypass the current legal system, with all its flaws.
Establishing whether an individual has been radicalised based on a burden of proof of ‘the balance of probabilities’ at least gives a fair starting point to protect the wrongly accused and allow the community to defend itself.
**********************
EXTRACTS FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY (AIC) REPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HOME AFFAIRS (DHA) REGARDING COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM (CVE) – AND COMMENTARY
Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) was engaged to conduct a process and outcome evaluation of the Living Safe Together Intervention Program (LSTIP). The evaluation focused on reviewing the different models implemented in each jurisdiction, the underlying theory of change, and early indicators of positive outcomes for at-risk or radicalised individuals. The evaluation involved two principles [sic] methods—a rapid evidence assessment of effective Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) interventions and an extensive, national consultation process with stakeholders involved in the program.
THE RAPID ASSESSMENT OF ONLY POSITIVE INTERVENTIONS, TOGETHER WITH EXTENSIVE STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATIONS, ALLOWS AND PREDICTS A SERIOUSLY BIASED REPORT. IT’S UTILITY AND VALIDITY IS QUESTIONABLE… Author
When the LSTIP commenced, there was some uncertainty as to the scope of the problem and the degree to which a dedicated intervention program was required. There is an established, recognised and agreed need for the program.
THIS POINTS OUT THAT THE PROBLEM WAS ILL-DEFINED, IF AT ALL. THE LSTIP WAS A “GOOD IDEA” LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM TO SOLVE. LSTIP WAS APPLIED TO THE ILL-DEFINED PROBLEM. BUREAUCRACY IS THEN SEEKING TO JUSTIFY THE EXISTENCE AND REFINEMENT OF A SYSTEM THAT HAS AN ILL-DEFINED OR HIJACKED PURPOSE. THE LSTIP MAY DELIVER SOME COMMUNITY VALUE, BUT IT DOES NOT SQUARELY ADDRESS COMMUNITY NEEDS FOR SECURITY AGAINST RADICAL EXTREMISM – NOR SHOULD IT BE PURPORTED TO DO SO… Author
The program has become embedded within broader counter-terrorism response with the level of intervention activity commensurate to relative threat level and demand…..
FALLACY. THE PROGRAM IS NOT “…COMMENSURATE WITH THREAT…” DURING JANUARY 2025, RADICALISM IS OUTPACING AUTHORITY’S PROTECTIVE POWERS TO PREVENT COMMUNITY HARM. THE PROGRAM CAN BE EXPECTED TO CONTINUE TO FAIL TO DELIVER COMMUNITY SECURITY – EVEN IF LEGISLATED… Author
The programs are embedded as part of the broader counter-terrorism response in each jurisdiction, providing a viable alternative to arresting and monitoring at-risk individuals. All of the Intervention Coordinators can case manage clients who are referred to the program.
IF DEMONSTRATED VIOLENT RADICALISM IS THE MEASUREMENT CRITERIA, THE PROGRAM IS NOT WORKING SUCCESSFULLY – IT IS NOT VIABLE. OFFENDERS ARE FREE TO CONTINUE THEIR DAMAGING ACTIVITIES, EVEN THOUGH PERHAPS A LITTLE MORE SOCIALLY ORIENTED DUE TO THE PROGRAM. THE COMMUNITY EXPECTS AND ACCEPTS THAT OFFENDERS INVOLVED IN DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE (DUI’s ) OR APPREHENDED VIOLENCE ORDERS (AVO’s) ARE ARRESTED AND/OR MONITORED. THE LAW PROVIDES FOR NUMEROUS CONTROLS TO BE APPLIED. SIMILARLY, SO SHOULD THE LAW BE APPLIED TO VIOLENT RADICALS DUE TO THEIR SERIOUSLY NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON COMMUNITIES – REGARDLESS OF AGE OR GENDER, WHICH APPEAR TO HAVE NO BEARING ON THE OFFENDING.
ALL INTERVENTION COORDINATORS ARE SAID TO HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MANAGE REFERRED CLIENTS – WHICH THAT MANAGING FOR COMPLIANCE TO THE INADEQUATE SYSTEM IS A FUTILE ACTIVITY…Author
The number of clients who have been engaged in the intervention program differs between the states and territories but appears to broadly reflect the threat level and demand in each jurisdiction.
OBVIOUSLY, THIS DOES NOT WORK TO PROTECT THE COMMUNITY BECAUSE OFFENDERS OFTEN ARE ACTUALLY REPEAT OFFENDERS – THE PROGRAM IS POWERLESS TO PROTECT THE COMMUNITY. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OR LOGIC PRESENTED THAT SUGGESTS THAT THE PROGRAM HAS PREVENTED RADICAL BEHAVIOUR – IT’S CONSPICUOUS BY ITS ABSENCE IN THE REPORT… Author
There was broad agreement that the CVE Intervention Coordinators are committed and highly skilled individuals who have effectively established and monitored the various processes necessary for the operation of the program.
THAT’S ABOUT PROCESSES – MANAGING FOR COMPLIANCE TO THE INADEQUATE PROGRAM. IT’S NOT ABOUT OUTCOMES THAT ARE EFFECTIVE/PROTECTIVE…Author
The ability of Coordinators to form relationships with other agencies to develop referral pathways and deliver services to clients was noted as being particularly well-developed. They are proactive in identifying implementation barriers but have, at times, had limited capacity to overcome these issues.
COORDINATORS ARE PROACTIVE AND CAPABLE AT IMPLEMENTING A PARTICULARLY WELL-DEVELOPED SYSTEM – THAT SYSTEM LEAVES THE COMMUNITY VULNERABLE AND LEAVES OFFENDERS FREE TO REPEAT/RENEW THEIR OFFENDING. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SYSTEM/PROGRAM AND COMMUNITY SECURITY IS, AT BEST, TENUOUS..Author
…….case plans are tailored to individual needs; interventions focus on positive community integration and participation with a view to building clients’ social and emotional resilience to extremist ideologies and introducing positive influences into their social network; and access is provided to mental health services that address issues with psychopathology and antisocial traits.
WONDERFUL!!…… BUT THERE ARE NO INDEPENDENT EXTERNAL DISINCENTIVES TO DOING RADICAL COMMUNITY HARM. TOLERANCE FOR COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IS INTERNALLY CONTROLLED. SELECTIVE PERCEPTION AND CONFIRMATION BIAS HAVE PROBABLY BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN DEVELOPING RADICALISM IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND THEY WILL CONTINUE TO APPLY TO RESIST EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING BY CLIENTS IN THE LIVING SAFE TOGETHER INTERVENTION PROGRAM (LSTIP) SYSTEM. LSTIP CLIENTS, WITH THEIR NEWFOUND SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE, MAY THEN BE EVEN BETTER EQUIPPED TO RETAIN AND CAMOUFLAGE THEIR REAL ORIGINAL VIEWS AND TO INFLUENCE OTHERS ADVERSELY… Author
However, interventions focusing on developing critical thinking and empathic skills, and those specifically focused on countering extremist ideological messaging in some way, are not being used.
THE MAJOR FOCUS OF BUREAUCRACY IS TO MAKE THE “CLIENT” FEEL LOVED [AND THEREBY ENCOURAGED TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES] RATHER THAN PROVIDING THEM WITH KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO FILTER INPUTS OF OTHER RADICALS AND TO UNDERSTAND THEIR IMPACT ON INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITY. EVEN IF THIS SERIOUS SHORTFALL WAS ADDRESSED, IT MIGHT NOT BE SUFFICIENT TO OVERCOME THE CLIENT’S TOLERANCE FOR COGNITIVE DISSONANCE [AS ABOVE]… Author
This includes improved access to mental health services, improved confidence and self-worth, forming prosocial relationships with peers, enhanced social and independent living skills, increased employability, and improved access to various government and non-government support services. There are positive signs of attitudinal change among young people with extremist views, but mixed evidence in relation to changes in behaviour and how these attitudes had manifested. ………………..there is a clear need to develop mechanisms for monitoring the progress of clients and measuring the impact of the intervention program across relevant outcome domains.
BUREAUCRACY FACILITATES/ENABLES OPPORTUNITY FOR CLIENT/OFFENDERS TO SPREAD THEIR RADICAL INFLUENCE FURTHER – AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT……..DESPITE HAVING “…limited data available on the impact of the intervention program”. IN THE REPORT, THIS IS HEADED AS “…promising evidence of positive outcomes….”
ACTUALLY, THE COMMUNITY IS LEFT VULNERABLE BY UNCERTAIN OUTCOMES OF A PROGRAM THAT IS NOT KNOWN TO BE EFFECTIVE.
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE AIC REPORT WINDS UP WITH A DAMNING STATEMENT ABOUT THE SHORTFALLS OF THE PROGRAM [LSTIP]:…Author
Among the most pressing issues are the absence of appropriate, consistent and formalised case management processes, different opinions about who should be included in the program, and concerns about the suitability of the s. 47E(d) tool, barriers to information sharing, the lack of consistent agreement about the aim of the program and definition of success, unanswered questions regarding the need for an intervention component, and concerns about the longer-term sustainability of the LSTIP.
THE LSTIP PROGRAM MAY DELIVER SOME DESIRABLE SOCIAL OUTCOMES, BUT IT IS NOT THE ANSWER TO VIOLENT EXTREMISM IN OUR COMMUNITY.
IT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE TO LEGISLATE INTERVENTION ATTENDANCE BY EXTREMISTS IN THE MISTAKEN BELIEF THAT IT IS A SOLUTION TO THE SECURITY PROBLEMS THEY PRESENT.
by CAA | Jan 28, 2025 | Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
If we are accused of banging on about the role of Police and schools, we plead guilty as charged.
The reason is two irrefutable facts.
Firstly, all, and we mean every one of the juvenile miscreants who are terrorising our community, go through the education/schools system.
Non-attendance is the first indicator of those children who need special attention.
So it is without apology that we push for that being the place to start, ground zero of criminality, and the Police must play a critical role in this.
After much criticism of VicPol by us and others of the lack of a Police in Schools Program (PSIP), a quasi-Police Schools program was introduced. This role was added to the commitments of police, who were already overloaded. And it is the next best thing to useless in this fight. It is unfair to the members and has extremely low effectiveness in the crime fight.
The reason this pretend program won’t work is that by its nature, it is spasmodic, and children only respond to regular commitments and will only develop meaningful relationships with the Police member as a person if the relationship is stable. It is precisely the same as teaching children about mathematics learning by rote and consistency. It is also the same dynamic that builds effective families- consistency.
It should also be accepted that a contributing factor in the attrition rate of Police is the lack of proactive work being undertaken. The Police members see the impact of juvenile crime and the lack of diversion available to them to steer young people away from crime, leading to their frustration with the policing role’s effectiveness.
There can be no better example of frustration leading to the loss of a very competent Police officer than the Opposition leader, Brad Battin, who was heavily involved in Operation New Start, a police volunteer organisation partnered by teachers and Service Club Members who worked together to ensure young people got to and stayed at school.
VicPol allegedly cancelled the program on the basis that it was too labour-intensive. That the program worked very well was not a consideration. The program was scuttled. Brad had had enough and resigned from the Force.
Now mature adults who went through the original Police In Schools Program can still and often do quote the name of the Police member who helped guide them many years ago, which is an accurate measure of the effectiveness of that program.
Being at the school on the same day at the same time to deliver a structured curriculum is the key, and anything less is of seriously questionable effectiveness and rates in the category of spin, something to distract critics.
The Government, Police or even, to a lesser extent, the schools tend to overlook the inescapable reality that amid those students walking through the door for their first day of school are the future juvenile offenders who will end up wreaking havoc in our community.
The community is getting sick and tired of bureaucratic buck-passing and inaction as those responsible seemingly take no action to stem the tide.
We cannot point to one initiative the government has introduced that stems this problem.
On the contrary, the government has introduced initiatives that feed into the juvenile cohort and are irresponsible.
The raising of the age of criminal responsibility allows those children who start their life of crime at a young age to escape any sanction to modify their behaviour until they are sometimes three to four years older. By then, they are well entrenched in the criminal sphere – too late to berate or lecture because it won’t work.
Softening Bail and custodial sentences to the point of abolishing them also feeds into the rise of juvenile crime, as there are no consequences for their behaviour. Moreover, criminal enterprises, whether local or large ones, can entice young people to commit crimes on the basis that nothing will happen if they are caught.
The second irrefutable fact is the solutions are in front of them.
Having programs to ensure school attendance and building relationships between the children and the Police as the symbol of authority in the classroom and socially at Blue Light Disco’s will work.
The highly successful Police In Schools program, Operation New Start, a program that got kids to school, and Blue Light are three initiatives that need to be urgently reintroduced to arrest the rot, devastating the future of too many of our children.
It is sad that Blue Light, which started in Victoria, is thriving in every other state and territory, with many Blue Lights operating in other countries but very few operating in Victoria.
These programs fed off each other and were highly successful when they were introduced.
The Force continues to promote the notion that they are understaffed, and to a degree, this may be true. However, staffing is all about priorities and stopping crime before it happens must be rated as the primary use of resources.
Any run-of-the-mill manager can achieve more productivity with more or unlimited staff; whether they are effective is moot; it takes a leader to prioritise the way out of the imbroglio of juvenile crime.
Crowing about arrests, as is often the case, as the police executive bustle to promote their performance; sadly, catching crooks is a higher priority than stopping crime in the first place. Task Forces are prolific, but not one is dedicated to stopping crime before it happens. They are all reactive, responding to demands that have occurred.
The frontline Police know what must be done; only the Executive seem to have their heads in the sand, hoping the problem will go away instead of making the hard decisions to change the course of criminality and Force priorities.
VicPol may even slow the exodus of police from their careers if members realise that they can become involved in meaningful programs that make a difference. Simply taking the miscreants to court to be continually bailed and then at court hearing all the excuses as to why the perpetrator should not be locked up to protect the offender from themselves and the broader community is extremely frustrating for police who know that there are better ways.
Often, understated is the financial impact on all victims as they open their annual insurance bills to see substantial increases and no matter how those increases are subject to spin, the reality is that insurance companies do not lose money as they adjust their premiums to the claims. With out-of-control crime, those premiums are skyrocketing.
Crime prevention is just as, or even more critical than, arresting criminals; just ask the victims.
by CAA | Jan 26, 2025 | Library, Politics, Victoria Police Issues
CAA SUBMISSION ON PROPOSED AMENDMENTS
to the
TERRORISM (COMMUNITY PROTECTION) AND CONTROL OF WEAPONS AMENDMENT BILL 2024
The principles of this legislation are flawed.
PART 1 TERRORISM COMMUNITY PROTECTION
There is nothing in this amendment that would in any way improve or provide any Community Protection.
The concept of this Bill as a community protection initiative is absurd as it identifies at-risk individuals and invites them to volunteer for the MAP program.
And there are serious questions about the efficacy of deradicalisation programs.
As reported in the Herald Sun on 15th of Jan ’25, under the banner ‘Deradicalisation programs have mixed impact, report says’,
“Deradicalisation programs have failed to change the behaviour of high-risk individuals authorities fear could commit acts of terror in Australia or produce data on whether the initiative actually works.
Further, there have been a small number of cases where the risk associated with clients had escalated and required the involvement of law enforcement.”
The revelations come amid rising reports of antisemitism and after a spate of attacks by individuals in deradicalisation programs last year”.
This report highlights the folly of relying on bureaucratic processes to manage such an important function to protect the community instead of the legal system.
If legislation is deficient, correct it and empower the law enforcement process to manage these extremists. Courts can at least make binding orders to mitigate risk, something the bureaucracy can’t do.
We were stunned to discover two operational deradicalisation programs, LSTIP and MAPS.
Establishing a deradicalisation industry is obviously on its way, which leads to suspicion that the growth of this industry has more to do with the players involved in creating their quango rather than protecting the community, which appears to be a by-product at best.
Again, this initiative is designed to help the perpetrators, not the public. The perpetrator-first approach is the hallmark of Restorative Justice, a flawed approach to crime and/or antisocial behaviour where the perpetrator is rewarded rather than punished.
The reliance on deradicalisation is a significant flaw as there is no empirical data to suggest the likelihood of success and no reliable mechanism to guarantee that deradicalisation has been achieved; the expert consensus is that it has a hit-and-miss success rate.
To rely on such a system to protect the community is an abdication of the government’s responsibility and should something go awry. The government should be held accountable alongside the perpetrator.
How is this protection manifested? How do the Community feel protected,
The community do not know who these individuals are, where they are located and the circumstances of their radicalisation.
A family may choose to change their circumstances if they become aware of somebody close being identified as being either potentially or actually radicalised. Moreover, the employment arrangements involving the perpetrator may vary legitimately when an employer finds out an employee is on that path.
Why should the community be left in the dark? That is not community safety. It is protection for the perpetrator.
The amendments do not address these issues, leaving the government with substantial liability if things go wrong, and they fail to let people know the risks.
We live in a democracy, and nobody should be exposed to sanctions by the government bureaucracy. This is an unambiguous role of the courts. The High Court has had plenty to say about this question recently.
The volunteer nature of persons entering the MAP program leaves open the allegations of coercion to volunteer, such as” Have we got a deal for you”?
As for the perpetrator, there appears to be no effort to include protection for their rights once they are nominated as potentially or actually being radicalised. At what stage can their rights be interfered with is, or should it be a matter for a Court, not the bureaucracy?
The failure to process suspects in the normal consequence through the Courts is a failure of democracy – they are voluntarily coerced into accepting they are radicalised, and they are entirely processed administratively, losing all rights.
The high court has been clear on the application of penalties by bureaucrats and not the Courts, and no matter how much bureaucrats may pretend otherwise, MAPS and LSTIP are sanctioning.
We are not arguing against the concept of deradicalisation, but we are saying that the courts, not bureaucrats, must manage it. At least that way, the radicalisation has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt or on the balance of probabilities, not some obscure administrative process.
If the current offences do not adequately cover these situations, new legislation must be enacted to ensure the Courts manage these people.
A parallel to understanding the folly of this approach would be to have the community advise a bureaucracy of a regular drunk driver. That driver is offered an alcoholic program but continues to drive under the influence.
A second and more current initiative is Pill Testing, where the government will test your illicit pills and give you the green light to take them. They are still illicit, and the tests only cover the pill presented, not the ones being consumed.
Their efforts, and there are more, indicate a trend where any personal accountability and responsibility is diminished and fuelled by government intervention.
The long-term result will be the diminished need or perhaps elimination of some courts as their function is demoted so that governments can control these matters through their bureaucracies. We will all then live in a Restorative Justice nirvana.
The cost of a democracy designed to manage the individuals without checks and balances the Courts would provide is horrendous, and the energy expended would be far better used to fit the suspected radicalised individual with an ankle bracelet based on a court order.
That would protect the individual from malice by false accusations and protect the community, whereas the voluntary program will not.
Part 2 CONTROL OF WEAPONS AMENDMENT BILL 2024
The Control of Weapons Bill amendments should repeal the whole Act and ensure that police have the power to do their job. This is a switch-on-switch-switch-off approach that is clearly aimed at controlling police operations without the expectation of any positive outcome, either proactively or reactively.
It is also a dangerous and direct attack on the essential independent operational function of policing.
It is ludicrous for Police to declare an area subject to exercising powers unless an improbable agreement can be made that all perpetrators restrict themselves to the given controlled area.
Controlled weapons do not gain status by being carried in a declared area, so the concept of controlled areas is absurd. They are always a controlled weapon no matter where they are carried.
The perpetrators only need to avoid the area to avoid detection – that doesn’t stop the problem; it simply relocates it. If anybody is found by Police with a weapon in the declared area, they obviously didn’t read the paper. The foolhardiness of this approach is the people who carry controlled weapons are most unlikely to read the paper or go online to the police site to check where the police operations are.
This strategy follows the line of the approach to the drug problem – providing injecting facilities – providing drug paraphernalia to addicts, and testing pills, all deliver the same message that these things are not really illegal because the government is facilitating them.
That’s how the warnings of declared areas will be interpreted.
The weapons are the same; therefore, perpetrators must be subject to the same risks of getting caught irrespective of where they are and when.
If the legislation is deficient in this area, the amendments must enhance the ability of the Police to intervene in the carriage of any controlled weapon.
Anybody carrying a controlled weapon in any place at any time must be able to be arrested and prosecuted. Police must have the power to search and seize based on reasonable suspicion. Reasonable can be tested by the courts.
by CAA | Jan 23, 2025 | Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
A headline in the Herald Sun on the 21st of January 2024 stated that reported crime at schools is at a 10-year high, with classroom crimes hitting 120 times a week.
While a percentage of offences have been after hours, with schools needing to suspend 90 students daily, a real problem of discipline is exposed.
Further, if anybody does not see the correlation between crime in our schools and the upsurge in juvenile crime, more generally, they have their head in the sand.
These problems can’t be reasonably palmed off as crimes by others outside school hours; there is an inescapable nexus between the school environment and after-hours crime, for the most part.
Nothing in the statistics would indicate that the students are not responsible for much of the after-hours of crime.
Schools should be a place of learning, and learning to be a criminal is not one of the skills we would embrace.
It was reported that schools can exercise discretion as to whether to report an incident to the police, and this is part of the problem leading to inconsistencies in crime responses.
Police are the only ones with the legislative power of discretion, and when a crime comes to the notice of a school, it must be reported to the police; if not a legal obligation, the school has a moral one to the whole school and general community, to which it is responsible. Protecting a student from an investigation is not the school’s role, as the investigation is how the truth will be determined; schools are not equipped to perform this function.
That this problem has reached this stage indicates that Victoria Police have had their priorities wrong and have had them wrong for nearly 15 years.
Interestingly, the CAA was established 10 years ago this year to address the issue of the Police’s failure to manage youth crime adequately.
Central to the management of youth crime is the reintroduction of the Police in Schools Program (PSIP)
The current schools program Victoria Police currently operates, is a shadow of the real program and probably no more effective than no program. You can’t expect positive results from a spasmodic ‘half-hearted’ approach. The ‘when we have time to do it’ approach will not work.
The CAA tried to establish a Police Veterans in Schools Program, and despite the best adverse efforts by the then Chief Commissioner Ashton to stymie the program, it was thwarted in the end by COVID-19. The first Police Veteran to enter a school under this program coincided with the introduction of COVID restrictions.
We recruited the first 12 schools we approached, and recruited a number of Police veterans to service them following the PSIP curriculum model.
Unfortunately, we are not well enough resourced to try it again. Still, there is no reason that VicPol could not recruit retired members to fulfil the Police in Schools Officer role, reducing the impact on other operational needs.
The argument proffered is that VicPol’s resources cannot support such a program. Still, Policing is about priorities, and when the Force has a reactive corporate mindset, proactive work to prevent crime pays the priority price.
Ironically, the Chief Commissioners in recent history who have achieved outstanding results each had the balance between proactive and reactive about right, and crime was managed. We also had a much safer State and a Police Force that was highly respected and engaged.
These shocking statistics are the responsibility of the current Chief Commissioner and the Police Executive, nobody else, and it is within their remit to resolve the matters.
The place to start is the schools. Don’t blame the parents, the legislators, or the courts, although they play a part in it. The blame is sheeted directly to the Force management. Excuses are a sign of inept managers. It is no doubt they will argue they haven’t got the resources, but they haven’t got the resources not to do it either.
We understand there is currently an internal management review in place, which would provide the opportunity for a good look at the Force’s priorities and effective management of resources.
This review must go beyond just ‘shuffling the deck chairs’ to make it look like the Force is doing something, but experience tells us unless the review addresses all the causes, nothing much will change.
One area that needs serious re-evaluation and de-prioritising is the task force groups; historically, they have been the easy go-to tool of police management, but the impact on the ability of the Force to provide adequate policing overall is adversely impacted and rarely a consideration, generally leading to more crime than the Task Forces are set to address.
There will always be a need for some Task Forces, but their establishment must be carefully managed as once established, it is very hard to invoke a sunset clause to their operation as the participants quickly gain a comfort factor in the privilege of working on a Task Force, being able to ditch their uniform in favour of a US Special Forces style dress up, generally avoiding shift work and gaining their rest days predominately on weekends, a cherished part of work-life balance not shared by Police working on stations, the real front line.
These task forces aggravate the operations of VicPol because the best and brightest, hardest workers are usually selected for these roles seen as prestigious, leaving stations void of experienced police.
It is too easy a solution to any crime outbreak to establish a task force or a targeted group by any other name. These groups are often given other titles to avoid the perception of the incorrect weighting of this type of policing.
As an example of the types of inefficiencies, a drug dealer moved into our local area and openly traded his wares predominantly on a Thursday. Lines of cars would enter the street with a line of people all carrying similar $2 candy-stripped carrier bags, obviously containing ill-gotten gains to trade for drugs.
The community reported the matter with an offer of an observation post in the house directly opposite, which was readily accepted by the Police.
This criminal activity was blatant to the degree that the transactions could be seen clearly from the observation point.
The community expected the matter to be resolved within a couple of weeks, maybe, but the activity continued for over three months, with the Police observing and the crook expanding his business to a nearby rented factory, so prolific was the activity.
A properly planned and orchestrated police operation could have netted numerous thieves and drug users on many occasions, including the primary offender, and the result would have been no less effective than dragging it out for over three months; after all, the penalty is the prerogative of the courts and all this extra work, we would argue, would not add to the severity of the sentence once the primary perpetrator was eventually arrested. However, the delay would adversely contribute to the crime statistics.
One thing is for sure: the responsible citizen who tolerated the disruption to their family by Police sitting in their front room for months on end, 24/7 will not offer that privilege to the Police again. Particularly, when technology could have achieved better quality evidence.
Alienating the citizens who hitherto supported police is not good policing by any measure.
A pragmatic measurement of this operation would demonstrate that when all matters are taken into consideration, it was inefficient and poorly managed.
The question, therefore, arises of how many other similar operations are inefficient and should have their resources redirected to proactive prevention measures and the operational front line.
by CAA | Jan 21, 2025 | Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
A new Magistrate appointment dedicated to dealing with repeat juvenile offenders has been announced, Herald Sun 20th of January 2025.
Does this mean the Government has lost confidence in the magistracy of this State to deal with repeat offenders, or is it nothing more than a ploy to give the appearance of doing something? Given that they haven’t addressed a primary cause, the failure of legislation, this is probably only a political spin.
As they say, the proof will be in the pudding, but we are not confident that anything will change.
When reviewing this Government approach to juvenile crime, to suggest it is ‘lacklustre’ is an understatement.
More than half the Children’s Courts across the State have been closed, and weak bail laws allow juveniles to ‘give the thumb’ to authority.
A whole cohort of juvenile offenders has been excluded from the Justice system by raising the age of criminal accountability; therefore, the younger cohort offends with impunity and avoids accountability, so no intervention can occur to steer them away from joining the ranks of the repeat offenders.
The youth crime surging to a 14-year high is only the beginning, not the end; we have more pain to come. And that is the pain suffered by the victims whilst the judiciary is immune.
If the government has not lost faith in the Magistrates of this State as this appointment indicates, the public certainly has. Young thugs, by their actions, treat the Courts, at best, as an inconvenience or, more likely, a joke.
Continually, we read how young thugs are bailed for various very serious crimes that are committed while they are on bail for equally serious charges.
It is not uncommon for thugs who have been bailed on multiple occasions, sometimes 30-50 times, to be granted bail again. And that is ridiculous and unconscionable. This is aggravated by the rising age of criminality, where there is no intervention to redirect the younger juveniles but instead teaches them there are no consequences for their criminal actions.
The Government is blind or ignoring the causes; where do they think the quantitative surge in juveniles is fed from? It is the 8-12 year olds providing the impetus.
Figures previously released to the Herald Sun revealed more than 100 kids aged between 10 and 17 years old were involved in at least 30 crimes each in 2024.
That number has tripled over the last five years.
There were just 34 youths offending at a minimum of 30 crimes a year in 2019.
The 103 repeat offenders recorded last year carried out at least 3090 crimes in 2024 alone, an average of eight offences per day.- Herald Sun.
The actual number of offences committed is doubtless very much higher.
The major problem is either the structure of legislation currently in vogue or the judiciary have steered away from convention and have embarked on ideological fantasy escapade, or both, which is our pick.
It was not so long ago; Police were reporting that 30 or so prime thugs were committing the majority of the crimes. That has now not only been debunked, but the number has tripled to 103.
How the appointment of one Magistrate will rectify the anomalies of a broken judicial process is beyond comprehension.
An outstanding omission in the Government’s response was the limited reference to Victims by the Youth Justice Minister quoted as saying,
“We know there is a group of repeat offenders driving the rise in serious crimes – that’s why we’re taking action to hold them to account while offering support to help young people turn their lives around.”
Youth Justice Minister Enver Erdogan said: “This is another important step in delivering a justice system that protects the community and rehabilitates young people”.
“We want to help victims get closure by holding young people to account and helping those heading down a wrong path realise the effects of their actions.”
Minister, if you want to help victims, helping them get closure genuinely is arrant nonsense. How about first stopping the crime and the impact on victims? How about re-introducing some of the past programs, not just paying lip service to the past programs but genuinely embracing them? Why do you want to turn lives around rather than stop them from offending in the first place, which would be the sensible approach?
The key is directing young people away from crime before, not after the fact. It is called prevention.
We are seeing disturbing reports of student misbehaviour in schools, and yet the proven Police in Schools Program, Operation New Start and Blue Light, has not been embraced to deal with this; instead, a facsimile to look like the original police school program is touted but it has not been demonstrated it works. A mere shadow of the real program.
We are unsure, but the age change to criminal liability may have completely scuttled the Police Cautioning program, the real bulwark against younger children moving through the criminal spheres to become the next generation of repeat offenders. Although it can’t be quantified accurately, the Police Cautioning Program was responsible for diverting vast numbers of young people from a life of crime.
We wish the new Magistrate well but are not hopeful that she will make a scrap of difference. At the same time, the Government fails to acknowledge and address their failures in relation to Bail, other legislative blunders and Police operational failures that feed this growing problem.
With this new Magistrate’s depth of experience, she should first be tasked with reviewing the legislation to make it effective, and then she may have something to work with. Still, as the status quo continues, she has little hope of pushing back against the Restorative Justice ideology that has infected our judiciary, one of the main causes of the judicial failures.
The Courts must follow the Law, not an ideology.
by CAA | Jan 17, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Victoria Police Issues
CAA comment
Opponents to the concept of involuntary care trot out the ‘hoary old chestnut’ of a patient’s rights, but when it comes to rights, we argue every person has a right to care appropriate to their health issue. If that means involuntary care, then we support that approach.
When a person’s acuity is so manipulated by deleterious health, then in the name of humanity, we must take care of them until they are well enough to look after themselves.
Our view is tempered in that there needs to be clear medical oversight as there must be legal oversight to ensure the patient’s rights are protected and the community, one does not outrank the other.
A mechanism to have any person taken into temporary care to be assessed and the necessary information placed before a Court to determine whether the person’s involuntary care should continue and for the accountability intervals to the Court for their continued involuntary care is the mechanism that we should aspire to develop.
Police and Ambulance first responders must be given the power to place people whose acuity is compromised into temporary care to be medically assessed.
Temporary Health Orders would be the most logical authority mechanism. They were thrown around with ‘gay abandon’ during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it should be well accepted by the community.
The imminent closure of one a Victorian jail provides an opportunity for the facility to be converted to accommodate involuntary patients, and in tight fiscal times the cost to the government in paying out on contracted services to operate the prison for many years may provide some financial benefit to the State – at least we will be getting something back including saving some lives currently wasted.
Some politicians, police and community groups argue involuntary care is key to addressing severe addiction and mental health issues
The brutal stabbing last month of a 58-year-old city employee in Nanaimo, B.C., made national headlines. The man was stabbed multiple times with a syringe after he asked two men who were using drugs in a public park washroom to leave.
The worker sustained multiple injuries to his face and abdomen and was hospitalised. As of Jan. 7, the RCMP were still investigating the suspects.
The incident comes on the heels of other violent attacks in the province that have been linked to mental health and substance use disorders.
On Dec. 4, Vancouver police fatally shot a man armed with a knife inside a 7-Eleven after he attacked two staff members while attempting to steal cigarettes. Earlier that day, the man had allegedly stolen alcohol from a nearby restaurant.
Three months earlier, on Sept. 4, a 34-year-old man with a history of assault and mental health problems randomly attacked two men in downtown Vancouver, leaving one dead and another with a severed hand.
These incidents have sparked growing calls from politicians, police and residents for governments to expand involuntary care and strengthen healthcare interventions and law enforcement strategies.
“What is Premier Eby, the provincial and federal government going to do?” the volunteer community group Nanaimo Area Public Safety Association said in a Dec. 11 public statement.
“British Columbians are well past being fed-up with lip service.”
‘Extremely complex needs’
On Jan. 5, B.C.’s newly re-elected premier, David Eby, announced the province will open two involuntary care sites this spring. One will be located at the Surrey Pretrial Centre in Surrey and the other at the Alouette Correctional Facility in Maple Ridge, a city northeast of Vancouver.
Eby said his aim is to address the cases of severe addiction, brain injury and mental illness that have contributed to violent incidents and public safety concerns.
Involuntary care allows authorities to mandate treatment for individuals with severe mental health or substance use disorders without their consent.
Amy Rosa, a BC Ministry of Health public affairs officer, confirmed to Canadian Affairs that the NDP government remains committed to expanding both voluntary and involuntary care as a solution to the rise in violent attacks.
“We’re grappling with a growing group of people with extremely complex needs — people with severe mental health and addictions issues, coupled with brain injuries from repeated overdoses,” Rosa said.
As part of its commitment to expanding involuntary care, the province plans to establish more secure facilities and mental health units within correctional centres and create 400 new mental health beds.
In response to follow-up questions, Rosa told Canadian Affairs that the province plans to introduce legal changes in the next legislative session “to provide clarity and ensure that people can receive care when they are unable to seek it themselves.” She noted these changes will be made in consultation with First Nations to ensure culturally safe treatment programs.
“The care provided at these facilities will be dignified, safe and respectful,” she said.
‘Health-led approach’
Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog says involuntary care is necessary to prevent violent incidents such as the syringe stabbing in the city’s park.
“Without secure involuntary care, supportive housing, and a full continuum of care from detox to housing, treatment and follow-up, little will change,” he said.
Elenore Sturko, BC Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, agrees that early intervention for mental health and substance use disorders is important. She supports laws that facilitate interventions outside of the criminal justice system.
“Psychosis and brain damage are things that need to be diagnosed by medical professionals,” said Sturko, who served as an officer in the RCMP for 13 years.
Sturko says that although these diagnoses need to be made by medical professionals, first responders are trained to recognise signs.
“Police can be trained, and first responders are trained, to recognise the signs of those conditions. But whether or not these are regular parts of the assessment that are given to people who are arrested, I actually do not know that,” she said.
Staff Sergeant Kris Clark, a RCMP media relations officer, told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement that officers receive crisis intervention and de-escalation training but are not mental health professionals.
“All police officers in BC are mandated to undergo crisis intervention and de-escalation training and must recertify every three years,” he said. Additional online courses help officers recognise signs of “mental, emotional or psychological crisis, as well as other altered states of consciousness,” he said.
“It’s important to understand, however, that police officers are not medical/mental health professionals.”
Clark also referred Canadian Affairs to the BC Association of Chiefs of Police’s Nov. 28 statement. The statement says the association has changed its stance on decriminalization, which refers to policies that remove criminal penalties for illicit drug use.
“Based on evidence and ongoing evaluation, we no longer view decriminalization as a primary mechanism for addressing the systemic challenges associated with substance use,” says the statement. The association represents senior police leaders across the province.
‘Life or limb’
Police services are not the only agencies grappling with mental health and substance use disorders.
The City of Vancouver told Canadian Affairs it has expanded programs like the Indigenous Crisis Response Team, which offers non-police crisis services for Indigenous adults, and Car 87/88, which pairs a police officer with a psychiatric nurse to respond to mental health crises.
Vancouver Coastal Health, the city’s health authority, adjusted its hiring plan in 2023 to recruit 55 mental health workers, up from 35. And the city has funded 175 new officers in the Vancouver Police Department, a seven per cent increase in the force’s size.
The city has also indicated it supports involuntary care.
In September, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim was one of 11 B.C. mayors who issued a statement calling on the federal government to provide legal and financial support for provinces to implement involuntary care.
On Oct. 10, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said a Conservative government would support mandatory involuntary treatment for minors and prisoners deemed incapable of making decisions.
The following day, Federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya’ara Saks said in a news conference that provinces must first ensure they have adequate addiction and mental health services in place before discussions about involuntary care can proceed.
“Before we contemplate voluntary or involuntary treatment, I would like to see provinces and territories ensuring that they actually have treatment access scaled to need,” she said.
Some health-care providers have also expressed reservations about involuntary care.
In September, the Canadian Mental Health Association, a national organization that advocates for mental health awareness, issued a news release expressing concerns about involuntary care.
The association highlighted gaps in the current involuntary care system, including challenges in accessing voluntary care, reports of inadequate treatment for those undergoing involuntary care and an increased risk of death from drug poisoning upon release.
“Involuntary care must be a last resort, not a sweeping solution,” its release says.
“We must focus on prevention and early intervention, addressing the root causes of mental health and addiction crises before they escalate into violent incidents.”
Sturko agrees with focusing on early intervention but emphasises the need for such interventions to be timely.
“We should not have to wait for someone to commit a criminal act in order for them to have court-imposed interventions … We need to be able to act before somebody loses their life or limb.”
by CAA | Jan 12, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Politics, Safe Injecting Rooms, Victoria Police Issues
CAA Comment
This is another insightful article in this important series, dealing with the inevitable pushback from the pro-drug injecting room lobby.
What is not addressed is the weight that should be given to this group and do they have a vested interest.
The argument is over establishing Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs in lieu of safe injecting rooms.
A very similar concept to the position of the CAA.
As a society, we would not tolerate accepting that a person with any sort of health issue was not treated, but rather, their affliction or disease was just managed, and the causes were actively facilitated when cures were available.
We will be closely watching the legal ramifications of the options to close and modify Injecting Rooms and convert them to Hart Hubs. Altogether a sound strategy from which addicts may recover from their illness rather than the addiction being fed.
The operator of a Toronto overdose prevention site is challenging Ontario’s decision to prohibit 10 supervised consumption sites from offering their services.
In December, Neighbourhood Group Community Services and two individuals launched a constitutional challenge to Ontario legislation that imposes 200-metre buffer zones between supervised consumption sites and schools and daycares. The Neighbourhood Group will be forced to close its site in Toronto’s Kensington Market as a result.
In its court challenge, the organization is arguing site closures discriminate against individuals with “substance use disabilities” and increase drug users’ risk of death and disease.
The challenge is the latest sign of growing opposition to Ontario’s decision to either shutter supervised consumption sites or transition them into Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs. The hubs will offer drug users a range of primary care and housing solutions, but not supervised consumption, needle exchanges or the “safe supply” of prescription drugs.
Critics say the decision to suspend supervised consumption services will harm drug users and the health-care system.
“We’re very happy that the HART Hubs are being funded,” said Bill Sinclair, CEO of Neighbourhood Group Community Services. “They’re a great asset to the community.”
“[But] we want HART Hubs and we want supervised consumption sites.”
‘Come under fire’
On Thursday, the Ontario government announced that nine of the 10 supervised consumption sites located near centres with children would transition into HART Hubs. The Neighbourhood Group’s site is the only one not offered the opportunity to transition, because it is not provincially funded.
Laila Bellony, a harm reduction manager at a supervised consumption site at the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre in Toronto, says she is worried that drug users may avoid using HART Hubs altogether if they do not facilitate the use of drugs under the supervision of trained staff.
Data show this oversight can prevent deaths by facilitating immediate intervention in the event of an overdose.
Bellony is also concerned the site closures will increase the strain on other health-care services. She predicts longer wait times and bed shortages in hospital emergency rooms, as well as increased paramedic response times.
“I think the next thing that will happen is the medical or health-care system is going to come under fire for being sub-par. But it’s really all starting here from this decision,” she said.
She questions how the HART Hubs will meet demand for detox and recovery services or housing solutions.
Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre and its sister site, the Queen West Site, serve hundreds of clients, Bellony says. By contrast, Ontario’s HART Hub rollout plan indicates all 19 hubs will together provide 375 new housing units across the province.
“The HART Hub model is not a horrible model,” said Bellony. “It’s the way that it’s being implemented that’s ill-informed.”
In a response to requests for comment, a media spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health directed Canadian Affairs to its August news release. That release lists proposals for increased safety measures at remaining sites, and a link to a HART Hub “client journey.”
On Dec. 3, the Auditor General of Ontario, Shelley Spence, released a report criticizing the health ministry’s “outdated” opioid strategy, noting it has not been updated since 2016.
National data show a 6.7 per cent drop in opioid deaths in early 2024. But experts caution it is too soon to call it a lasting trend. Opioid toxicity deaths in 2023 were up 205 per cent from 2016.
“We concluded that the Ministry does not have effective processes in place to meet the challenging and changing nature of the opioid crisis in Ontario,” the auditor general’s report says.
“The Ministry did not … provide a thorough, evidence-based business case analysis for the 2024 new model … [HART Hubs] to ensure that they are responsive to the needs of Ontarians.”
‘Ill-informed’
Ontario has cited crime and public safety concerns as reasons for blocking supervised consumption sites near centres with children from offering their services.
“In Toronto, reports of assault in 2023 are 113 per cent higher and robbery is 97 per cent higher in neighbourhoods near these sites compared to the rest of the city,” Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones’ office said in an Aug. 20 press release.
The province has also cited concerns about prescription drugs dispensed through safer supply programs being diverted to the black market.
Police chiefs and sergeants in the Ontario cities of London and Ottawa have confirmed safer supply diversion is occurring in their municipalities.
“We are seeing significant increases in the availability of the diverted Dilaudid eight-milligram tablets, which are often prescribed as part of the safe supply initiatives,” London Police Chief Thai Truong said at a Nov. 26 parliamentary committee meeting examining the effect of the opioid epidemic and strategies to address it.
But Bellony disputes the claim that neighbourhoods with supervised consumption sites experience higher crime rates.
“Some of the things that [the ministry is] saying in terms of crime being up in neighbourhoods with safe consumption sites — that’s not necessarily true,” she said.
In response to requests for information about the city’s crime rates, Nadine Ramadan, a senior communications advisor for the Toronto Police Service, directed Canadian Affairs to the service’s crime rate portal.
The portal shows assaults, break-and-enters and robberies in the West Queen West neighbourhood have remained relatively stable since the Queen West supervised consumption site opened in 2018.
In contrast, crime rates are higher in some nearby neighbourhoods without supervised consumption sites, such as The Junction.
“While I can’t speak to perceptions about a rise in crime specifically around supervised consumption sites, I can tell you that violent crime is increasing across the GTA,” Ramadan told Canadian Affairs. She referred questions about Jones’ statements about crime data to the health minister’s office.
Jones’ office did not respond to multiple follow-up inquiries.
Mixed feelings
In July, Canadian Affairs reported that business owners in the West Queen West neighbourhood were grappling with a surge in drug-related crime.
Rob Sysak, executive director of the West Queen West Business Improvement Association, says there are mixed feelings about their neighbourhood’s site ceasing to offer safe consumption services.
“I’m not saying [the closure] is a positive or negative decision because we won’t know until after a while,” said Sysak, whose association works to promote business in the area.
Sysak says he has heard concerns from business owners that needles previously used by individuals at the site may now end up on the street.
Bellony supports the concept of HART Hubs, offering addiction and support services. But she says she finds the province’s plan for the hubs to be unclear and unrealistic.
“It seems very much like they kind of skipped forward to the ideal situation at the end,” she said. “But all the steps that it takes to get there … are unaddressed.”
