Unsilencing Stories

Ben: Episode 6: Conference in Vancouver & Government Response

Unsilencing Stories Season 2 Episode 35

In this episode, you'll hear Ben talk to Luca Akai and Esther Cheung about the positive and negative experiences he had while attending a conference in Vancouver, BC. You will also hear Ben discuss the effect local municipalities can have on peer workers efforts.  

This episode was recorded on November 22, 2022.

Caitlin Burritt  00:00 

Thank you for listening to the Unsilencing Stories Podcast. We are in the midst of a public health crisis. More than 32,000 people in Canada have died from fatal opioid overdoses since 2016 according to Health Canada. Previously, this podcast featured interviews with bereaved people in smaller towns and communities in BC and Alberta who have lost loved ones to fatal overdose. In this phase, we're sharing interviews with seven harm reduction workers, also known as peers, in different parts of BC.  

 

Caitlin Burritt  00:27 

The BC Centre for Disease Control Harm Reduction Services defines harm reduction as support services and strategies that aim to keep people safe and minimise death, disease and injury from high risk behaviour. Peers face a lot of challenges. This has been documented by many researchers including Zahra Mamdani and colleagues in BC. In their 2021 paper they outline significant challenges peers face including financial struggles, difficulty finding housing and stressors at work. We wanted to explore these themes with peers and find out more about their experiences and share this information with the public. So we conducted multiple remote interviews with harm reduction workers and invited them to talk about the stressors they face.  

 

Caitlin Burritt  01:06 

Please note this podcast contains information about substance use, overdose death, grief, trauma and stressors that peers face and this may be distressing to listen to. The podcast is part of a research project led by Aaron Goodman, PhD, faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC, and conducted under the auspices of a grant known as the Chancellor's Chair Award. I'm Caitlin Burritt, a researcher with the project. A number of researchers including Giorgia Ricciardi and Chloe Burritt, who happens to be my sister, and a number of students have played key roles in the study and you'll hear many of their voices in this podcast.  

 

Caitlin Burritt  01:40 

In this episode, you'll hear Ben talk to Luca Akai and Esther Cheung about the positive and negative experiences he had while attending a conference in Vancouver, BC. You will also hear Ben discuss the effect local municipalities can have on peer workers efforts.  

 

Esther Cheung  01:54 

Great. How are you? 

 

Ben  01:58 

Pretty well. Had to get the garbage out this morning. So I didn't have the greatest sleep for the last couple hours. But I got a couple of good night's sleep in the city, despite all of the busy schedule for the most part. So I'm not doing too badly. 

 

Esther Cheung  02:26 

That's good. 

 

Esther Cheung  02:29 

How was the conference? How did it go?  

 

Ben  02:33 

Oh, there were a couple of hiccups. But it was pretty awesome for the most part. There was a few things about the conference that was not not particularly well, well done. You know, some of the people from service agencies or whatever, were making upwards of $50 an hour or two, you know, $300 an hour and they only paid the peers $10 or less an hour, which I guess they spent the same amount of money on food for everyone as they did for paying people and I think I might have mentioned that before.  

 

Ben  03:19 

But it was better than nothing. But it's just quite disrespectful. And I don't know,  there was a certain amount, an unfortunate amount of time spent going over that kind of stuff that we didn't really resolve anything or there wasn't really, really any great answers given for why that happened. 

 

Ben  03:45 

And some people were really unhappy, for sure. I mean, it's not fair. And especially as I think we've talked about before, it's upwards of 50% of successful lives saved are saved by, by peers. And so all the other people that are making money, addressing the crisis are doing it on the shoulders of those peers, largely and you know, at least their justification for being paid so much disproportionately more than the people that are having the bigger impact is hard to hard to comprehend. 

 

Ben  04:30 

Anyway, yeah, there. There were sessions on supposed to be sessions on best practices for peer engagement. And one of the one of the main ones is peers should get paid at least $25 an hour. So it's kind of silly to have an event with a session on a topic like that and not even follow the, the indications in that regard for your event. So I don't know.  

 

Esther Cheung  04:56 

Yeah, that's kind of ironic, isn't it?  

 

Ben  04:59 

Yeah. 

 

Ben  05:01 

However, it was the first time. Well, the only time I guess this particular. Well, we organised something at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Vancouver 15, 17 years ago that was sort of similar in terms of being a, was a satellite symposium that was all peer led. And that's the only other time in, in this part of the world anyway, that I'm aware of something that was so peer centred on such a scale has, has happened, but and, you know, there's a lot more peer organisations, certainly in British Columbia, and I guess it's not, it's growing across Canada, but British Columbia, certainly in the lead. 

 

Ben  05:51 

It would have been, it would, would have been hard to have something like this not that long ago, but should happen more, I would say, for sure. And I guess we can expect it to happen again sooner than it, hopefully won't take another seven years or whatever for this to happen. 

 

Esther Cheung  06:09 

Yeah. Do you think this conference or this event has changed your outlook on the job or your experience on it? 

 

Ben  06:22 

Well, I feel more connected to the other people working as, as peer support in British Columbia, and a lot of people I've been in touch with on Zoom and that sort of thing. But people are certainly a lot different in person than on Zoom. A lot of the time, you have a completely different impression of someone when you're meeting them at a different kind of distance like that. ButI guess, ideas that I might have on my own, in my own head, or that I talk about with my partner are reinforced by hearing from other people, or I guess the, the significance of certain perspectives is, is enhanced when other people are, are restating them or emphasising them.  

 

Ben  07:20 

So it's, I don't know, we took a we took a fellow with us who does work for the the overdose prevention site here, which is, I don't know, at this point, it's kind of not even the right name for the thing, because they're not really doing much to prevent overdoses, because they only have spots for a couple of people to inject drugs, and most people are smoking drugs. And I don't know, again, it's like there's several people that are earning salaries is sort of run or oversee this facility, which isn't really even operating functionally at this point. So meanwhile, the pure volunteers are sort of picking up the slack and taking it upon themselves to provide what support they can away from the facilities and the facility isn't really giving the local drug users the things that they need to be saved.  

 

Ben  08:18 

So and I wasn't as aware of that for one thing. I mean, I was it was, it's really, it's really become worse in the last few weeks, as the weather has deteriorated. And you know, it should be moving in the other direction, given that the need is, is growing under the worsening weather and so forth. 

 

Lucas Akai  08:45 

Do you find that the, the volunteers that go with you these conferences, have a good learning experience there? Are they deeply involved in that whole seminar process? 

 

Ben  08:58 

No, they've never been anything like this before. And they were very enthusiastic about what they learned there and the connections they made with other people, and I think they were radicalised to a significant extent. You know, maybe a little bit overly fired up. Just, you know, not going to, not really going to I mean, it's, it's good to get angry to some extent, but I don't think that we're going to gain a lot of ground by blaming particular individuals, although, you know, hypocrisy is good to point out but I don't know.  I just, I don't think taking it out on on a particular person is is really the way to go to get things to improve things. 

 

Lucas Akai  09:53 

And so are the volunteers that would go, go with you to these seminars, these conferences are they also offered the same like, in this case, $10 an hour and other cases, 25? 

 

Ben  10:07 

 They weren't they weren't going to be, but it worked out that way. So I'm really happy about that. And they also, they did cover our pet care costs, which I was surprised to learn that they were willing to do that. So that was a, that was a nice surprise, because was $35 A Night to have our kitty looked after. So, that would have taken in more than a day's pay out of my pocket otherwise. 

 

Lucas Akai  10:38 

And so in regards to the $10 an hour affair with this conference, obviously not meeting the $25 an hour that you've talked about previously. Do you find that this is just from a lack of understanding from the conference over what the best practices are? Or, you know, you mentioned that there was a seminar relating to best practices. Are these seminars run by different individuals within the broader conference organiser?  

 

Ben  11:07 

Yeah, they, they just didn't have the funds, they would have had to, they would have had to reduce the scope of what they were offering otherwise at the conference. And yeah, they're, most of the sessions were run by peers, as opposed to service providers, so. And I do think if there had been more time to organise, and obviously, if there was more funds available, they would have done it differently. But I agree that the important thing was to make it happen, as opposed to just not making it happen, because the money wasn't there. But they could have. 

 

Ben  11:46 

I mean, the food was really good for the most part. But they, they could have provided fewer snacks, perhaps and paid people more people could have chosen their own snacks. And I expect it was, I expect they paid a substantial amount for granola and baked goods that other people might have had other priorities for their, their money than that.  

 

Lucas Akai  12:21 

Right. Right. Do you find that with you residing in a more rural area? When you come to Vancouver, in particular, do you find that that provides a differing viewpoint on the overall crisis or the way you see things or? 

 

Ben  12:37 

And when he came into town, we drove down, Hastings and I probably mentioned we haven't been in the city since COVID hit so things have gotten a lot more extreme, although it was pretty, pretty busy down there last time I was down there, but there wasn't such a great cluster of tents and stuff like that. And it was, it was pretty shocking to see the extent of the homeless situation that spilled out onto the street there lately. 

 

Ben  13:12 

And the, you know, I've, I've attended to a couple of overdoses personally, but not so much and in, in the time that the crisis has been happening, as I've been to many, many events previously. And they've, they've certainly gone come a long way in terms of what they provide for people to help keep people safe and make it possible to stay at the event and not be off in some other an unregulated environment to have to do your drugs. So, you know, it was definitely impacted my perspective significantly, I would say. 

 

Lucas Akai  14:02 

Do you maybe want to expand on the ways that that impacted your perspective and the ways that it's affected you? Otherwise, maybe, there was other other days within the conference, so maybe we could discuss the types of seminars that were run?  

 

Ben  14:18 

Sure. Well, we heard from a lot of people about how much effort they put into helping keep people alive and, and sort of, well, even, for example, in our local area, they actually try to restrict peers from attending to an overdose without having already checked in with the sort of supervisor, service provider people which is pretty silly, I think. 

 

Ben  14:57 

And you, and you're supposed to call like two different people before you provide Naloxone or that sort of thing. And, you know, time is of the, of the essence largely in that kind of situation. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that that's the, the rules, so to speak, like, obviously, if you're, I think you're going to take it seriously when it's in front of you. And I don't think many people would find that sensible way to proceed, but I'm not sure. It just there's there's only so many organisations that are involved in doing this work. And I don't really understand why they aren't making more coherent policies as far as that kind of thing goes. 

 

Ben  15:55 

As far as other kinds of sessions, I guess, we attended one about involving queer people in peer outreach, which was good, I think, considering the large portion of rural communities that were represented there, I think there's a significant need for better understanding of of those. And, you know, also the fact that queer people are more susceptible both to substance use issues, as well as taking their own lives, significantly, especially young people. 

 

Ben  16:43 

It was, it was good to have some education available for people to better understand that, that reality in their, in their neighbourhood or communities. One thing that they had done, that was a little bit ridiculous, especially given the fact the, the pay wasn't just $10 an hour, because they had scheduled a 12 hour day for the first day of the conference. So it would have worked out to being closer to $8 an hour or something if they went ahead with that. But in the end, they decided it was it was too much already, by the end, by the early evening, and they cancelled the sessions for the later evening, there was a really good Indigenous welcome provided by [bleeped] who we've met previously, Not Just Naloxone events.  

 

Ben  17:44 

So there was a good inclusion of Indigenous groups and perspectives. There was a very brief meeting with the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions who was supposed to be on site for the event, but apparently the parliament was, they they scheduled a session in Victoria that she had to be present to attend that. So she only called in on Zoom for 15 minutes. So people were pretty upset about that. And we spent a fair amount of time on the first evening and morning of the first full day coming up with a response to the minister and demands about future consultation. 

 

Ben  18:51 

You know, based on the brief time we had to speak with her she committed to following up on the demands and essentially complying with the request to have a face to face meeting with a fairly large number of representatives 12 or 15, something like that, for three hours, it's supposed to be. But we've been we've had plenty of consultations and recommendations made that aren't followed through on or sometimes they don't even get mentioned in the the official response or document that are produced afterwards. 

 

Ben  19:38 

 So we can't really expect or wait for the, the powers that be so called to, to give us what we're asking for as much as we need to carry on doing what seems to be required, as best we can without the support of the government or that sort of thing. 

 

Lucas Akai  20:01 

Maybe speaking on numbers very quickly. You mentioned 12 to 15, for this one meeting, but overall for the conference, do you happen to have an estimate on how many peers were present?  

 

Ben  20:13 

I think there were at least 30 groups represented and the main body of, of peer groups that the organising, the organisation responsible for hosting the event is funding, I guess most of these groups, but about half of that number, have been meeting regularly for a year and a half now. So we might expect to more or less double the number of groups so we can include in our meetings in the future, hopefully, now that they've been looped into this extent.  

 

Lucas Akai  20:54 

So was part of the goal then to get these newer groups more experience through interactions with, like, I mean, the experienced organisers and leaders or?  

 

Ben  21:04 

Absolutely.  

 

Lucas Akai  21:06 

And so maybe back to seminar topics, for the first day, was there anything else that stood out? I mean, anything pertaining to perhaps like the five stressors that we've discussed about over this past couple of weeks? 

 

Ben  21:23 

I guess something that I wasn't fully aware of previously is how much actual interference and obstacles are raised and inserted in, in between peers and others that are trying to organise to address the overdose crisis by municipalities in particular. 

 

Ben  21:51 

Quite often, like, I guess we're pretty lucky in, in our area that we have more or less supportive municipality, municipal government, because in a lot of communities, they, they're, they won't provide space for people to meet, let alone actually house a drug user organisation or facilitate the provision of safer supply or that sort of thing. 

 

Ben  22:26 

And the, the option of, well like the, even the term safer supply was pointed out, there was a presentation by the BCCSU, and the most outspoken representative of that organisation was emphatic about the need to change the language around that to, uh. 

 

Ben  22:50 

Because he feels it's been co opted by the government, essentially, when they talk about safer supply, he finds it to be more or less meaningless term at this point. So I think regulated supply is, is more on the money as far as what we're really aiming for. Because the you know, if you buy your cigarettes at the gas station, or the, the drugstore or whatever, it's not particularly safe, but at least you know, what is in the package that you're getting, and you're not going to be surprised by the outcome of consuming that product. So similarly, with alcohol, though, alcohol has more deadly impact on the population overall. Because so many people are continuing to consume that substance. Again, you're not. It's not tainted, as it was during prohibition of alcohol. 

 

Ben  23:52 

You don't get poisonous substances mixed with your, your alcohol and you buy it at the government store or the off sales at the pub or whatever. So having access to appropriate substances through a pharmacy would provide regulation to that extent, but even just you know, a lot of a lot of work has gone into making compassion cloud model applicable to accessing opiate drugs and and other things that are currently tainted and the government is still throwing up barriers to making that a reality when it would be more or less straightforward and there are people that are prepared and already doing as much as they can to make that kind of option, a reality. 

 

Ben  24:59 

So, it's certainly disappointing that they don't, not only don't support it, but they more or less ignore or resist the efforts that are made to follow the requested, you know, applications and stuff like that to, to make it a legal choice. So people continue to do what they need to do to make tested substances available and allow drug users to know what the, what it is that they're purchasing. And it's obviously a lot, a lot less dangerous if you know that there is nothing contaminating your, even if you're a fentanyl user, you can be confident that you are getting a regulated amount of the drug that you're consuming, if you are purchasing it through a compassion club type of model where it's been thoroughly tested.  

 

Ben  26:07 

And there's no middleman or anything in between you and the supplier to add anything questionable to the mix, when you're getting your drugs that way. Yeah, there's, that's as, as far as what the government is doing as well, there's still a lack of support for people who are using stimulant drugs in particular, compared to opiate drugs, even though there's plenty of people that are dying. So they're kind of ignoring that factor.  

 

Lucas Akai  26:42 

And do you find that with these, was there a lot of media coverage with this seminar or does that also tend to go under the radar in regards to both how the government tends to pass on these types of events? And is that the case with the media as well? Or? 

 

Ben  26:59 

I guess, yeah, pretty well. I find that the CBC does quite a good job of, of covering things, and they give a good, good amount of coverage to the activists involved in addressing the crisis. But other, other, other outlets, not so much, I would say.  

 

Lucas Akai  27:23 

And so earlier, you mentioned the obstacles, that instabilities will often put in place to prevent peer workers from being able to do their peer work. And while you noted that, you're fortunate in that not being the case, where you presently live, is that something you faced in the past in other locations, or? 

 

Ben  27:40 

Well, we did have, when we were sort of starting the CAT team, early on in the in the crisis we had, when they were beginning to provide testing machines, like a spectrometer and that sort of thing. We had organised an event when we were going to bring in a spectrometer for people and talk about how that works. And assuming people attending would want to test their drugs, and they probably want to use their drugs. Having tested them, we thought it was important to have the facility on site to let people do that.  

 

Ben  28:27 

But first of all, they wanted to move the event to a location right across from the police station, and then they ended up cancelling it all together. So that is sort of the, in the beginning when we started the CAT team here, the police and ambulance, I think I've said before were, were participating. And since then the police have essentially stopped participating in the CAT team. 

 

Ben  28:58 

But they they were the they were insisting on changing the venue and that sort of thing. So that's the main example I can think of when that's happened to us locally.  

 

Lucas Akai  29:10 

And do you find that on such as in case of this seminar, this series of conferences when the government minister did not show up? Is that something that happens frequently, even on a lower level of government when they're invited guests are?  

 

Ben  29:26 

Um. Well, again, I think that the the local government to date has been pretty consistently attending CAT team meetings, but I don't know about so much in terms of follow through or, or that sort of thing. I don't think that they necessarily, they don't necessarily have the intention and when they attend to take, take notice of all the information or or priorities that are being presented, they might just want to be keeping tabs on the situation, more so than actually participating in good faith so much. 

 

Ben  30:18 

So it's hard to say. But I think that they have a lot of other people talking to them about other priorities. So, of course, they're not only listening to the CAT team participants. And even as far as that goes, the CAT team is not, not really peer driven. I mean, they do include peers, but they, even the, the current coordinator for the CAT team is called a peer expert or something like that, but I'm not sure where they get their expertise from, because they don't really have the lived experience, so much so. As far as I know, I don't know if they took some kind, of course or something. But it seems like not really too authentic expertise as far as that goes.  

 

Lucas Akai  31:20 

And so in regards to the government ministers their appearance at these types of events rare, does this quite rarely happen?  

 

Ben  31:28 

You know, this the first time we've had an event like this, pretty much, so. Probably, it was, it was pretty surprising that they were included at all, but it was. I mean, it makes sense that they would, considering the severity of the crisis, they should definitely want to be participating. I know that other large scale events have certainly been at least attended in the, in the launch phase or at the at the outset of the event we've had, like the mayor of Vancouver, but again, I mean, Vancouver is pretty exceptional in terms of its position in the crisis, as well as the seriousness that they take the situation and or, you know, with as far as even the current rather shabby effort at decriminalisation and that sort of thing.  

 

Ben  32:31 

There's already been de facto decriminalisation, in effect in Vancouver, Greater Vancouver area and, and more or less across British Columbia, which is not not the case in the rest of the country. So I think, although things are far from, far from great, we're definitely in a much better position than much of the rest of the world and even the rest of the country.  

 

Lucas Akai  33:03 

So unless there's any other questions in regards to any of that, I believe we can begin to wrap up. 

 

Caitlin Burritt  33:10 

That brings us to the end of this episode of the Unsilencing Stories Podcast. To listen to more interviews in the series, please go to www.unsilencingstories.com. And if you'd like to share your thoughts on the episode, message us at unsilencingstories@gmail.com. Thank you for listening.