Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us. Here we are again. It is a roundtable feature from True Patriot Love and Paul Mucci, Anthony Fury and myself, Mike Wixon all around the mics today. And Anthony, I have to hand this one to you almost right away because when you told me about it when we were entering the studio, my reaction was a combination of shock and nausea. But this is the truth and it's happening right now.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: This is an incredible story and one of my great sort of policy passions in my writing, broadcasting when I run for office, is the subject of urban decay. The idea that our cities are falling apart for many reasons. A real tragedy, disorder, a breakdown of our infrastructure and that we, we can see the rise and fall of great North American and western cities throughout history. It happened to Manhattan, it happen to Detroit. Those cities made a bit of a comeback in the West. We got Seattle, Los Angeles, Vancouver. They're going down the hill. We don't want to see this happen at other cities. And you want to stop the fall, stop the decline right away. I did not know that this was happening in the city of Barrie to the degree that we have just learned that it is. I've been to the city of Barrie a bit recently here and there. I went for a hockey tournament with my son. I've gone for some meetings at city hall and there are people with drug issues hanging around city hall.
It has gotten so bad that the mayor, Alex Nuttall has declared a state of emergency. Nick's queued up a few clips for us and we'll take a look at this. And also with the mayor explaining just why. Here's the first one.
[00:01:44] Speaker D: The city of Barrie does not have control over this emergency until now.
Today I'm announcing that I've declared a state of emergency in the city of Barrie as I requested the former administration to do.
While we wait for the county's long term plan to be implemented, the city of Barrie is immediately instituting the state of emergency to reclaim our streets, our boulevards, our parks, our squares, our feeling of safety and our order.
While this order will not appoint federal judges to protect the rights of citizenry to live in a free and lawful society, it will address the problem from the ground up.
Barry City Council has already done so much.
In 2023 we provide an additional 1.65 million increasing our funding to local social service agencies.
Also in 2023 we ended the prisoner drop off program in downtown Barry. The left individuals in our downtown from around the province of Ontario when they left incarceration at penitent so let's just pause in 2025 with a help about.
[00:02:47] Speaker C: What we've seen so far. I mean, that's quite something. Like, those are really strong words, you know, saying you're listening to this and you're going, am I watching a movie? Like, what am I seeing here? And then he details what's actually going on, what they're experiencing on the streets. Right there, we just heard it. They have a program where criminals get let out of jail, they get put into the streets of Barry. Just lots of lawlessness, drug issues. And here. And we're going to fast forward a bit into this press conference as he breaks down stuff that people are going to find unbelievable. Take a listen to this.
[00:03:16] Speaker D: In the last two months, we've had a double homicide, E. Coli levels reaching almost five times the failure concentration in our streams leading down from the encampments to our beaches. A major increase in tents along city streets with the closure of the encampment.
Multiple fires being set. Last Wednesday alone, a tent that was right behind me being found with drug money, drugs, multiple cross booms and a pistol.
Assaults, rampant drug use, overdoses, theft, exposure to needles by citizens just trying to clean downtown. Defecation in doorways, increased encampments and public indecency.
And with all of this, I can.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Honestly there, guys, when you listen to that, you feel like, what's he gonna say? Like he says, oh, double homicide. You go, that's too bad. He says, e. Coli in the water. You go, what's that about? And he makes it clear it's from homeless encampments where they're defecating so much into the water supply it's causing a public health hazard. And he just keeps going and he says, oh, there's even a.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: There's a violence aspect to this that is outrageous. The weaponry we just saw in a tent.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: In a tent.
[00:04:24] Speaker C: The crossroads in the tent right where the mayor standing there like in the downtown core.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Double fires in the last week.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: It's so funny. I never think of Barry as having become this center of. Of these kind of problems.
And here we are. This is like the worst of the worst list.
I often think living closer to the city up in Barrie is a very nice, sweet little town, isn't it? And now they're faced with this.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: It is the headquarters of the opp, right?
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Down the street in Orillia. I guess you're right.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: You know, growing up, you know, that's where we used to go by all the time. And quite frankly, a beautiful building. And most of the Officers doing a great job, lived in the city of Barrie, had young families. So I always thought Barry would be a safe and secure community.
[00:05:13] Speaker C: And when you first hear state of emergency, because that's what is the newsworthy part of this. The mayor is declaring a state of emergency. You go, what can be going on? And even when we were bouncing around other people, we said, oh, Barry, state of emergency. And someone said, oh, like a wildfire sting. Like, that's where their headspace is. It's like, well, no, because the city's become so lawlessness that you need to bring in some extra powers to be able to move quickly to deal with some of these.
I think the mayor is doing a service just by drawing attention to this, both to let people and Barry know he wants to tackle it, but also for the rest of us to know. Like, there's real stuff going on out there. Like, wake up, people.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: I'm so curious. And then, you know, a downstream problem, all kidding aside, you know, the E. Coli, you know, going into the beaches now.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: So they can't swim in the water because the encampments now, it's.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: You can see it's. It's deteriorating the city. Just those. Even. Even a small percentage of those problems would be really bad in any city the size of Barrie.
You know, it occurs to me, it sounds to me, and maybe you guys know, I hadn't gotten this deep from that clip. It sounds to me like the mayor had made this suggestion as a counselor previously to the previous mayor.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: He was the mp, actually, and then he became the mayor, but same thing. Oh, he was pushing for the cleanup earlier.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Okay. And. And so this is now him just saying, okay, there is no other choice.
We've tried since 2023, by the sounds of it, just to stop this one program.
And this is the net result.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: And, you know, again, going back to the numbers, tens of millions of dollars spent already, yet he's estimating by the time of this four years is up, he'll have spent, or the city will have spent. $100 million.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: $100 million on this issue for a small city of Barrie.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Imagine what $100 million for a small city like Barry could actually do for Barry. They have an amazing hockey program, as you point out. The. The arenas could always be enhanced. You know, it's a growing area, and innisfil just below it there to create more services and to beautify those areas would be a much better use.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: I don't know, how about build more affordable homes?
That money. Think about that. Money, Sorry, you know, you know, that's my hot button is to finance. Yeah. Think about, think about like that money is really providing no economic spin off benefit. That money is purely being to mitigate an unsolvable problem. It's to, to hire police officers, to secure it, to hire ambulance drivers, to take people to the hospital, fire departments to put out fires. It's really just all the money spent so far on that. The tens of millions of dollars have really provide no economic benefit at all.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: No, it's disaster cleanup at this point.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: It is. To get back to fact, it's like a FEMA event.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: That's.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Really. It's a disaster recovery. Right. We're going to put so much aside as a reserve because we have a disaster happening in our cities, you know. And you know, I know during the election it kicked, keep kept coming up with some staggering numbers of the number of people who've died from drug overdoses surpassing the number of people who had died in World War II.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Yeah, these stats are staggering.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: But now you're seeing some of the, the offshoot ramifications of this. Right? A state of emergency. Have we ever had a state of emergency for a cabinet in Canada?
[00:08:50] Speaker B: No. I mean, well, I've heard about. In the US I was going to say I've heard about it in the US and it looks like they've. And those actually made a difference. Those encampments did go away and I think that it was post hurricane problems. But in Canada, have you guys ever heard of anything outside of a natural disaster causing a state of emergency?
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Well, they do declare special states of affairs in cities for homelessness and they do things like I'm declaring, you know, homelessness a pandemic or whatnot. And the reason they're doing that is basically to ask for more money for shelters, but not a change of attitude. So that's more something that's pushed from more, you know, a left winger. So I, I don't want to be partisan about it, but it's generally more from that perspective they push it. Whereas what Mayor Alex Nuttall is, is doing is saying like wake up. And Paul, I think he nailed it. FEMA style disaster.
Except those are usually natural disasters. This is a man made disaster and urban decay is a policy choice and he's left cleaning up the choices of.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Past governments and he's got tough things to do. I mean, how do you. It's so funny. I just took a look at a list of what's working and then what some of the experts Are suggesting would be the measures to actually clean up encampments, which is mainly drug problems and homelessness can be met. Drug problems are the first problem that they have to deal with. And so you know what's failing so far? Safe supply without accountability.
I don't think maybe you guys have a different opinion. I've never heard of a safe supply situation working in any city.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: No, no, no.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Endless encampment tolerance. Okay. We find every excuse to keep encampments open because of, you know, the realization these are human beings. And of course we realize that, but it just pushes the encampments around.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Can you, can we jump back for a minute? So you know, he, the mayor, you know, goes through and tells us that he's the drop off zone for penitentuishing. I guess the penitentiary there.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: So I guess they get on a bus, we drop them in downtown Barry, and then from there they disperse. That's what I'm kind of taking.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: I believe what happens is because there's a major bus hub there for transportation and also the go that that's where they're. They're given their. Their release is. Okay. Here you've got transportation to get back to your family. But they don't go anywhere. They stay there.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: Because there's dealers right there waiting for them.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: To say, make this your home now.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:24] Speaker C: This immediate area.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Well, that's what he's saying. He's actually at one point in his address, he actually says that more than half of the people in the encampments don't come from the region. Yeah.
So he's inherited them based on programs. So to your point. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: No, no. And also the catch and release policing, you know, once they get them in this town. Barry doesn't have the facilities to process all these people. And drug courts are only open occasionally. We probably need those up open more often. And then as Anthony pointed out before, optics over outcomes.
We need the money. We need this. Here's our problem is a lot of this is encampments on display.
Just long enough to get funding for whatever the city will use it for. I don't know. But it is on display. And then some of the measures that are suggested by drug treatment people, by the police themselves, crush open air markets fast. So when you get off that bus, there is nobody there that needs to be heavily policed. Zero tolerance for public use. No, we don't need safe injection sites. Mandatory stabilization and treatment leverage. Everybody that gets arrested must be evaluated to see if they need treatment. Very standard in my Mind, it's not something we do. Drug court running weekly, not currently happening. Encampments, closed period and same day offers. And that was interesting to me because I had never really thought about this before. When you go to close an encampment, some offers are made. We can put you in this scenario. We can put you in this scenario. At that moment, the people that give a yes to treatment and need to be in a bed the same day, not two weeks after processing and slipping through the system.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: Sure. Although one, I've had a lot of public debates about this because people, I say we're closing the encampments in the parks and then the playgrounds are not doing it. And then people say, well, there's no beds. Where are you going to put them? And you're supposed to go, oh, okay, yeah, fine, we'll wait until there's beds in six years from now. No, it has to be a community first approach where we're not going to have encampments here. In this particular neighborhood we've targeted. You know, the go bus community in Barrie is destroying the downtown. They're not here. Oh, where are we going to put them? Okay, fine. Question. But that question is not an impediment to the action. We're still getting you out of there because it's destabilizing the whole area. Not in the parks, not in the playgrounds. It makes, it degrades life for the kids and the families. Where are you going to put them? Okay, I'll respond to that. We'll deal with that. But they're not staying here full stop today.
You're gone because to your point about closing the encampments, they get into this like long term situation where if you don't shut it down the first day on day 10, day 20, day 30, you're like, oh, what do I do? What? Day one.
Remember when they had this big protest encampment that took over U of T? It wasn't a homeless encampment, but it was a protest encampment. They said, oh, what do we do? What do we do? They were full. The security guards, not just the cops, the security guards on campus were within their right on day one to go give me that stupid tent and rip it up and kick them running when the first guy put down the tent. But because they waited until there were 100 of them, they, they really put themselves in a pickle. So day one, we're not doing this. Yeah, I think has to be the zero tolerance approach.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: I went through this. I think I told you before. I went through this for two years with one of the businesses I had in Scarborough, and it was a terrible, terrible experience because the encampment formed behind my business.
So first, you know, there's a tarp goes up in a tree. Then there's a second tarp, a third tarp, a fourth tarp. Then there's a bunch of smoke every night. Then the person is mulling around your business, trying to use the restroom, trying to get food, drink, whatever they can get, harassing your customers, harassing your staff.
Next thing you know, he gets a girlfriend.
So at that point, I said, okay. I called and I said, what do we do to this city? This is in Toronto, of course, in Scarborough. I called and said, what do we do with this? Well, we'll send a social worker. So the social worker comes and they say to them, you know, are you okay? You know, they assess their mental health. And they said, you know, we'd like to take you to a shelter.
And, you know, I was there, I was listening to the whole conversation.
And the gentleman at the time says, no, I don't want to go to a shelter. I like living outdoors. This is great. This is how I want to live.
Quite frankly, I can't do my drugs, I can't drink, I can't do all the things I'd like to do in a shelter because they won't let me. The shelter, I guess they were going to take them to, and this is how I like to do things. And they said, well, you don't own the land. You know, you're on a hydro corridor. You are kind of, you know, you're squatting here.
It's dangerous. So they came through and he just says, no, right? So, you know, and the police are there as escorts for the social workers. So they're. They're out on the phone doing something else. They, you know, the social workers back says, well, he's. He's not a threat to himself.
I said, I know he's not a.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Threat to himself, but he's a threat to my clients. He's disturbing the neighborhood and he's paying taxes.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: I'm trying to run a business. I'm struggling away, paying my bills.
I said, you know what? I really need help here, right? If it becomes a bigger issue, give us a call.
So, you know, a month later, you know, a small fire.
So I call and said, well, now he's had a small fire because he's got a stove, he's got a propane stove, and he's cooking in the back. I Guess he fell asleep and him and his girlfriend and you know, by then they have a friend living with them. So now there's three of them and they're coming and going. I have shopping carts all over my. So he's bringing shopping carts home every night with food and drinks and everything, leaving them in my parking lot that I have to take and take back to the grocery stores.
Bottles, garbage, everything.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: You're taking them back from?
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I'm taking. I'm taking his empty.
I'm actually taking his shopping carts back. I'm cleaning up, I'm doing everything. I'm like. So I went through for two years and finally I met with the police that are in the area, the street, that monitor the street.
And I had a nice conversation with them. I just said, have you ever gone in and asked them for his name, his id, who he is?
And they said no. The social worker goes, and we don't really know. I said, well, don't you think we could police check them to see if he has any warrants outstanding? So they went in.
All of them had warrants. The gentleman who had started all this had 17.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Oh my God.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: So the only way the encampment was shut down is they were all arrested.
So they're all taking off.
So they're leaving. Right.
They're all happy because they're going to spend the winter indoors. Indoors.
[00:18:34] Speaker C: And then they get out and they get let out in Barrie, where they get to E. Coli, the system.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: It is a vicious cycle. Oh my gosh. Like, wow.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: It puts you in despair.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: It does.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Well, right.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: You're thinking to yourself, what, what, you know, we taught. You know, I know recently there's been big discussions about all this home invasion stuff and everything else, but this is also an evasion of your privacy, right? Because you're trying to conduct a business while you're managing through someone who's lawlessness and doesn't want to comply with any of the norms, which I understand, but then we're going to social work them back into society.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Well, I think that one of the major things that we would all agree on is that you can't expect people that are so far gone on drugs, Fentanyl being the one that comes to mind, of course, as it's the epidemic of the moment. But there will be other ones and there are other ones. And the reality is, until these people become. Well, you cannot rehabilitate them. I'm sorry, you. You cannot take a fentanyl addict and expect them to rehabilitate themselves in that state, I'm sorry, but it's the truth. And so, you know, 24 hour treatment, 24, seven treatment, somebody says, yes, I believe they should be in a bed right away because otherwise they're going to find a way around that to their next score and maybe even die.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Well, the interesting thing is, and the mayor, you know, God bless him for, you know, the state of emergency, everything he just says, you know, so the, the, I guess recommendations to fix this after the state of emergency is that he's going to test the waters to see if they have E. Coli, right. Then he's going to go back upstream, he's going to find the encampments closest to the water source and he's going to shut them down. Right. So that's kind of his, you know, he's working backwards.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: So I got to go back. So then I got encampments that are close to waterways.
He's going to shut down and he's going to then take those people and he's going to put them into indoor regulated shelters which they, the real reality is they either he knows, I assume he knows, or he has an inkling is they won't go and they'll move on to another city. So it really is just. So we're passing. So from Barry, I guess when you catch what's the cheapest bus ticket out of Barrie, where do you end up probably?
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Oh, Toronto.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Yeah, Toronto.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Well, you know, Toronto, maybe Toronto is the next stop.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: It is. But a lot of them don't like Toronto quite frankly because, you know, competition, competition, it's, it's, you know, there's already so many encampments, you can't get into them because they run as packs.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: Right?
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Right. Like Mike, the crew that was by my place, they're a pack that runs together. Right. They're kind of like a community of homeless people that moved in.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: So smaller cities like Collingwood, Orangeville, Owen.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Or, you know, a lot of them, quite frankly, from what I'm hearing, I've spent a lot of time in Ottawa, are heading into our nation's capital and they, you know, 100 meters, you know, from Parliament, they actually set up in the core and they work out from there.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: And you know, Barry sounds like similar to what we saw in Calgary, to be honest with you. It sounds like an almost an identical scenario where, oh my goodness, the homelessness and drugs on the street.
You know, I'm sad to say that, you know, in our three days there, I noticed as many as three or four people dying on overdoses. Right. Near our accommodations. This is an prominent part of town, Ottawa. I should point out their version of the Eaton center here in Toronto is.
It's post apocalyptic.
As you point out, it's a danger zone.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: Look at what we're naming. And because I mentioned Vancouver in the early roll call, we got Barry in the mix. We were saying we didn't realize it was Barry. I think we're just talking about every city in Canada here.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: It seems like, yeah, Montreal has. It's just the equal amount of problems. You're right. And as you become one of the smaller cities, it seems like the problems could be more intense. In fact, Barry, Calgary, you know, not metropolises, but this is like you point out, maybe that's being avoided by the homeless. This was an idea. Can I run this by you guys?
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Have you ever heard of flood zones where they just light up an entire area? So the neighborhoods where these encampments are become lit up and cameraed 24 7.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: It's like blasting classical music in the stairwells.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, they did.
Baby Shark, I think was the, the one that they did in, in Washington. But this seems to be the one thing that everybody that prescribes the harsh prescription to this problem says has to happen. That it. You really do have to have a FEMA moment where the areas are flooded and they're heavily policed and cameraed and you don't feel welcome being on the streets.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: There's.
Right. So you as a homeless person, I got you. So you have to spend more money. So just, you know, in my case, I have to go back, I have to run power, I have to trench power back there. I have to get a camera back there, I have to get lighting back there and. And then I have to get security to monitor it to make sure they don't bring the shopping carts and I'm with you.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: No. They say this is easily one of the most expensive propositions that a police, police force can take on. And they, they don't.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: No.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: The municipalities need to agree to do this in conjunction with the police. And then there's a bunch of laws that need to be examined on, you know, surveillance and things like that.
I don't know that this works. But for certain, something has to be done in the way of an emergency.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: Here's an interesting one. The former Ottawa police chief was telling me about the other year, what they call a compassionate sweep, where you have an area that's very troubled with drug issues.
And you say that you're gonna go in and just mass arrest everyone, even for petty crimes and so forth, knowing, you know, there's no bail reform, they're not staying in jail and so forth. They're only gonna be there for 48 hours, 72 hours. And you get everybody on board before you do it. So you call the local hospitals and you say sorry, sorry, you're not, you're not. You're mass arresting the drug dealers, right? Every, even the small time dealers. You're not, you're not arresting the users. Should clarify. So then you call the hospitals, you let them know you're doing it. You call the social service agencies, everybody knows beforehand. So you've disrupted the drug supply. And the dealers are going to be getting out in 48 hours because they know how. But people are already losing their fix. So they go to the hospital and they tell a lie. They say, I work at the construction job, I hurt my shoulder so I need oxycontin. Okay. You know, they're actually just addicts and the dealer has been locked up. So then you get them in treatment, you know how to disrupt the models and so forth. And you hope you've given yourself enough time window to break cycles, enough so that the dealers are gone. You can go in, talk to people, social workers there, get them in. Yeah, it's not a perfect thing but you're going to sweep some people up and you're going to hopefully get a number of them.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: That sounds like a really great.
[00:26:02] Speaker C: And some of the dealers will stay in jail and so so forth. But it's one, one approach.
But it has to be like a multi prong.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that does sound great. I mean it sounds like the community coming together to, to stop a problem, but letting the hospitals know and creating community awareness.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: But shouldn't Barry be the easiest? Like if you read the list, the list of things that you read out earlier, Mike, about how to kind of deal with the issue.
Like if you go from the top to the bottom, Barry should be, if you think about it, probably one of the easier communities to enact that. Right. Again. And I'm not picking. I love the OPP guys, I'm not picking on them. But it's already has a presence of large law enforcement. Right. So already. And as the city police, you say.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: It'S a bedroom community for the.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah, people there, they're in the. That. So what was the first one again? Just walk me through.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Because crush open air markets fast. Well they, they likely could do that.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Anthony's. Yeah, that's Anthony's solution. So like quite frankly the next one is mandatory.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Stabilization and treatment, leverage. So in other words, while we've got everybody in a state of withdrawal, let's try to draw them in and make them well.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Yeah, Shock and awe campaign.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: To be honest with you, it's one of the most sensible things that I can process with this problem.
[00:27:24] Speaker C: But your story about the business where the guy was staying, the police came to your point. The cops act is support for social workers, but they don't often take the lead. And I think that's one thing that's broken. And to bring us back to the video, I think that's what the state of emergency that the Barry mayor, Alex Nuttall is dealing with here. Because in our most tragic example in downtown Toronto, when there was the young mom who was killed in drug gang crossfire, we had the drug injection site. The users were totally welcomed and the philosophy and the agenda of the harm reduction people said, oh no, we don't have a problem here. Obviously the dealers came because that's where the users are. So dealers, we have to respect the intelligence of the criminals more than we do when we talk.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that's true.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: They're going to where the customer base is. They're shooting at each other. They kill an innocent bystander who had nothing to do with it. And one of the workers at the drug site has been charged with aiding, allegedly aiding and abetting one of the drug dealers who she then entered a romantic relationship with. So her first response, response to a woman being killed in front of this drug site was not, can I go to the aid of this woman who's been killed, But I need to go to the aid of one of the dealers. And that's the employee at the government sanctioned safe injection site. Which tells you the philosophy that a lot of people have in the social service agencies is not aligned with the philosophy that we're talking about here. So if we say this is all common sense, the polls may show that, you know, 80% of regular folks agree with us, but I would say like 90% of people at these places don't necessarily agree. And that's a problem.
So just because of what they're teaching at the schools and the sort of dogma they're teaching each other. So even if we have an area where the police are able to flood the zone, who is actually, what department is actually in charge of directing the philosophy behind this?
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we need less task force and more force, to be honest with you.
Just in general, we seem to put a lot of money and time and thought behind virtue Signaling around these issues where solutions, like you talked about, solutions that are going to be needed in Barry really need to arrive now.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: And then where do they go? So, you know, you flood the zone, and then they say, give me some help.
Where do we send them?
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Well, I mean that, like Anthony points out, the hospitals need to be on the ready. There needs to be some sort of reinforcement where maybe they don't normally have that in, you know, drug treatment or, you know, trauma treatment, but they need to be prepared. And I like the sound of that. It sounded like a good coordinated effort. And even though it may not do mass numbers, it does save people that.
That normally would not have been. Is. Is that going to do it in the. In the numbers that we need at this time? I don't know.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's what I'm thinking. Right. So once. Once you flood the zone, you get them. You get them to the point where they want to go somewhere.
Where did they go? Like in Barry, the. You know, the mayor is trying to open up beds for them to go.
Right. So he's taking care of, like, shelter.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but Paul, even shelters are dangerous. Horrible places to be.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Don't want to go there.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: No, they don't, because they have their own set of clicks. Right. They have their own set of people that if they haven't been going, they got to try to simulate into them. There's violence. There's issues. A lot of times, to Anthony's point, there's some staffing issues that tend to crop up over time.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: That's a pretty serious staffing issue.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: So. So, yeah, that's a really bad one. But the, you know, you have those things, the human nature that. That happens with people. And quite frankly, you have those issues.
So. And we have enough after Covid, we have enough real estate available to us to actually open up centers to try to deal with people. We just haven't done it. And again, it's a budgeting issue. So if the problem is a state of emergency problem, there's gotta be a center that we can. So this poor mayor who has to so say there's 100 people that are. Once you flood the zone, end up kind of coming and saying, if I don't get something soon, I'm going to not make it till tomorrow. Right. Okay, we'll take you to a center and we'll help you through that. So we get them to a center, right? Then the question we have to deal with next is then the methodology of how we treat them. Once we get them to a Center. Right. Because right now we were talking about it earlier, we get them to a center, we give them methadone, we try to get them kind of weaned off whatever they're taking. And quite frankly, then we hope that once they get through that process, they sort of transition back out. I don't know where we think they transition to, because at that point we've kind of cleaned them out, but then we put them back on the street.
So I'm not sure it's a great question.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: And let's talk about methadone for a second in Narcan.
These Narcan saves your life. Apparently, getting high to the point where you are dying is the key to some of these drug addicts.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Many of them, that's the high. That's the ultimate high.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: So they put Narcon, they'll put Narcan on them, as we witness, and says, if I go down, help me out. Right, okay. You've just saved their life.
At that point. At that very point where you saved somebody's life, they need to be hospitaled. If one of your family members had a near death experience, you would expect them to be hospitalized until they were fully examined and they were better.
So why aren't we making that effort?
[00:33:08] Speaker C: And the people who are the biggest advocates of getting tougher on this are the family members of.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Right. Of.
[00:33:14] Speaker C: Of their loved ones who are on the streets with addiction issues. Like, we don't talk about that aspect. Like you're bringing up Mike, or the fact that drug overdoses aren't just a temporary thing to your body. Like, it's good that you don't die from them.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: But then there's permanent damage to arteries and different parts of your body. And you know, Narcan, great, it saved you. But if you do that two, three, four, five, six times, you're almost. You're permanent damage.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, there's only so many lives that cat will have.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: You know, and then the other one is methadone. I don't know anything about methadone, but what I do know, my whole life, I've heard of methadone as a treatment for these, you know, the heroin style drugs, and heroin specifically, I believe.
How does that work? I mean, are you forever addicted to methadone after that? Have we not worked past that? And what other countries are using methadone to treat this way? I guess America.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: But is it, is it actually a solution?
[00:34:13] Speaker A: It appears to have a 50. 50. Right. It works on.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Not great odds. I'm sorry.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: No, no, it's not, you know, and that's the challenge. Right. The people are starting to arg. The pros and cons. People are saying it works on half to 60%, doesn't work on the others. And quite frankly, there's now sort of studies coming out in other countries that just do it cold turkey that are showing better results. So they're making people suffer through withdrawal.
And by suffering, it's creating that memory, muscle memory. And that person that says, I'm never going to do that again because, you.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Know, I can't feel that way again.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I can't throw up and do all kinds of nasty stuff and have all kinds of pain for three days like I had. Because as human beings, we try to avoid pain if we, you know, and that's the argument against it saying if we.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: It's inhumane to put somebody through that kind of torture.
[00:35:07] Speaker C: But the lows probably then hurt you more than the highs of the drug high. So to your point, the brain says.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Oh, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that.
[00:35:15] Speaker C: Don't have that pain again.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Because if you ever have to come off it, you're gonna have to come off it again. But then, so, you know, think about this conversation. So this comment, I don't want to leave that thought because we've kind of transitioned from, okay, we can't prosecute.
Right. So catch and release. Not enough jails, incarceration.
The laws aren't built to. So the prosecutors don't even want to do drug cases to encampments, to state of emergencies.
And now we're.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: That's social work, not policing. Don't forget Paul.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Yeah, And. But now we're kind of gone down the path of, okay, we've got through all that. Now we've got the person into a hospital, into kind of withdrawal.
Where do we send them and how.
We don't have a. But we've. We've seen more deaths from.
Than World War II, you know, if you look at comparative numbers. So this is definitely a big issue. It's. It's something that's not going away.
Case in point, we're calling a state of emergency in Barry.
So, like, does it.
But isn't there. Isn't there. You know, this would be interesting and have Jeff on. I'd love to go through with him, who's come up with kind of a process to deal with issues. But isn't this kind of like, okay, step one, encampment gets built. Okay, you know, to me, please don't kill me on the notes or the social.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Take it, just take it.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: The comments. But to me it's almost a process driven encampment sets up. Here's step one, right. You go in, flood the zone. Step two, you do these things and then quite frankly down the line, as people show up at the hospitals or people need help, right. They're moved off into treatment centers that have philosophies and then you try to study the impacts to see if you're making any impacts on recovery. Because at the end of the day you're trying to get that recovery done or completed and that person functionally back into society to get going again. That's the like.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: As you say that it occurs to me and maybe I'm wrong, but one of the biggest. We have so many programs out there to deal with people getting back. You know, there's a million ways onto the street and only one or two ways off the street.
Both of them. Three, sadly. But the other two ways are often the distance between what you're talking about getting from encampment into treatment. And once you get into treatment, many of these organizations, certainly in Ontario, they are better off at that moment. Once the person has gone through treatment.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Their programs actually can have some effect. Their programs actually can, you know, assist these people get back to living.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I know Anthony, but it's that distance. Yeah. There's. There's charities that once you're recovered, they will help you with clothing, they will help you with got to shelter, they will help you with job training there. There's that. That, you know, I think we do a good job from there onward.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: So the first 90ft, right. The hardest battle.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Yeah. But we don't do we do a great job of getting them there. Obviously not because we're not seeing the results.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: If we divided the amount of money put into homelessness relief with the number of homeless in Ontario, we could probably just cut a check for like $5 million to every homeless person.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Is that it does something like that.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: It's probably in that territory.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: And once again, all of these programs are not the first 90ft of this battle, which is everything in getting somebody to actually get someplace.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: But it, you know, and just my last, kind of one of my last thoughts on it, it's not even the direct impact on society of what's happening. It's also the indirect.
So the amount of, to Anthony's point, the amount of money and resources and time and issue management that we're putting into this to spin our wheels is hurting us as A country going in directions we need to be going now. So again, you know, change of, you know, change the paradigm. You know, our lives are all kind of changed. Everyone talks about how, you know, since COVID and since, you know, Trump and the US Issues, we've had all that stuff. Our lives have changed. Okay, I get it. Right. It has. So our focus has to change so we can keep kind of focusing on. On the same issues that we have and kind of spiraling around those having no impacts. Or we can try to put it in processes. Because countries that deal with addiction and deal with encampments, that's the way they do it. They put a program in place, they march down that road on that program, they measure the results of that program, and they say, is it effective or not?
And then they see the outcomes and then they alter, and then they hopefully get to a better. Well, they are getting to a better outcome than we are right now.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: But there's also.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: And these are. Some of them are third world countries, some of them that are doing better than us. But those aren't even developed countries right now.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Those are countries that put a concerted effort into policing at the community level.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: At a federal level, community policing and all of that. It's not that this is police in many of these countries, police on the streets with automatic weapons.
It's not nice to look at, but that's what they've done to stem the problem.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they. They. When they flooded the zone, they really flooded the zone, so they cut it off.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Well, I feel sorry for the mayor and Barry, but it. What a brave moment, I think, that we're seeing on this topic.
Any final thoughts?
[00:41:15] Speaker A: I wish him well. You know, I hope he succeeds. I agree.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: All right, well, listen, your thoughts, your comments on what's happening in Barry and in your own community.
The one thing that I do notice already in the comments is people draw comparisons to what we're talking about, to what's happening where they live.
Please keep us informed on that front and don't forget to subscribe and tell a friend. This is TPLMedia CA. Thanks so much for joining us.
