Whitehorse NGO concerned about future of harm reduction with federal election around the corner

The head of a harm-reduction organization in Whitehorse is concerned about what impact the upcoming federal election — and a new government — could have on programs and support for people who use drugs. 

"We've really seen an increase in misinformation about substance use and harm reduction and the toxic drug crisis kind of across the country," Jill Aalhus, the executive director of Blood Ties Four Directions, said in an interview this month. 

"And in the Yukon, we've continued to have a lot of community support, but there is concern that our programs could be at risk."

Blood Ties operates a number of services in the city including the territory's only supervised consumption site, where people can consume illicit drugs in a controlled environment with staff on hand. 

Harm reduction advocates and front-line workers say sites like Blood Ties are critical for preventing or reversing potentially-fatal overdoses and putting people in touch with other resources like counselling or housing support. 

However, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has referred to supervised consumption sites as "drug dens," with the party, in its election platform, promising to ban them from within 500 metres of schools, parks and seniors homes while also imposing "strict new oversight rules to ensure they are pathways for treatment and recovery." 

Liberal leader Mark Carney, separately, has said the federal government is "undergoing a review of the effectiveness" of supervised consumption sites, while both the NDP and Green Party have previously explicitly pledged support for them. 

The Greens, in their election platform, promise to expand funding for supervised consumption sites and harm reduction services to ensure "nationwide access," including in rural areas and correctional facilities, while the Liberal and NDP platforms do not explicitly mention them.

Blood Ties' site, located on Sixth Avenue in downtown Whitehorse, opened in 2021 and has seen tens of thousands of visits since. Aalhus, who previously worked as Blood Ties' program manager, said it drastically changed the organization's work. 

"I remember living in Whitehorse and working at Blood Ties before we had a supervised consumption site and we had to respond to overdoses outside in the snow and in really difficult positions," Aalhus said. 

"And now we have this great facility… [But] anytime there is a change in government, we worry, will this essential work continue?"

Whitehorse resident Lauren Hill told CBC News that harm reduction was a key issue for her this election, and that any talk of closing supervised consumption sites, or making them harder to access, was a line-in-the-sand for her. 

"I am firmly opposed to this attack on life-saving healthcare and the blatant disregard for the lives of people who use drugs," Hill said. 

Aalhus said the toxic drug crisis has been held up as a "wedge issue," and that recent national conversations have pitted treatment and recovery options against measures like supervised consumption sites. 

However, she said that didn't need to be the case. 

"The way that we see harm reduction is that it's a spectrum and it includes supports for people wanting to reduce their substance use … but also the supports that people need to stay alive," she said. 

What the Yukon candidates say

CBC Yukon presented some of Aalhus's comments to the four candidates running for the territory's lone MP seat during a forum last week and asked them about supervised consumption sites, harm reduction and the toxic drug crisis. Here's what they had to say, with answers edited for length and clarity. 

Gabrielle Dupont (Green Party)

At the Green Party, we see it as a healthcare issue and safe consumption sites are a tool in the toolbox to address this problem. And we do have other tools in the toolbox. And one important tool is treatment. And we do know that when people are ready to seek treatment, we also need to be ready to offer them a spot, a bed, a place in our programs. And another important aspect of offering treatment is to make sure that we do have treatment available in communities where people are, because this is also where they have their support network. People are vulnerable and it's not the time to put them in one big building in Whitehorse or anywhere else. It's a time to keep them where they are and offer them the services, the treatment that they need. 

Ryan Leef (Conservative Party)

I think some of the great work being done in the Yukon for harm reduction. At the same time, compassion dictates that we need to focus on treatment, so our government would look at opening 50,000 spaces for treatment. What that will look like will no doubt be regionally-driven. I think there are a lot of treatment angles and opportunities that need to be driven by our community here in the Yukon, including ideas, support and concepts driven by our First Nation population, our First Nation governments, working closely with them so that we're helping our people with very specific treatment needs. Nearly 50,000 Canadians have died from fentanyl overdose. The Yukon has some of the highest rates of deaths per capita for fentanyl and if we're losing 30 or 35 Yukoners to fentanyl overdose, that's affecting everybody.

Katherine McCallum (NDP)

My family has been directly affected by addictions and the trauma that leads to those addictions. My experience with a family member who did go into treatment was that when they got out, there weren't enough supports for them, so they relapsed and it took them many, many years to crawl their way out of this problem. And I think that, in my experience, the addictions are often caused by trauma. And I think that we need to deal with people's mental health and support NGOs who are offering harm reduction programs and post-harm-reduction programs. Mental health should be part of the healthcare system. People should be paying for mental health with their healthcare cards and not their credit cards. And I think that if we can just deal with the trauma, we may actually solve a lot of the addiction problems. 

Brendan Hanley (Liberal Party)

I've been involved in assisting in this crisis since 2016 when we first had fentanyl arrive in the territory, in my previous role as the chief medical officer of health. One of the areas that I've worked on as an MP was raising the issue, raising awareness and working with many of my colleagues, including my good friend NDP MP Gord Johns who had a private members bill to bring us to a national drug strategy, including both of us traveling to Portugal to learn how we can use models from overseas to apply here. I'm very worried about some of what I'm hearing from Pierre Poilievre — calling supervised consumption sites drug dens, for example. We need to focus on prevention, harm reduction, access to treatment and enforcement, use all of those four pillars and scale up dramatically.