In 2024, what will the NWT do about drugs and treatment?

“Growing up in my community, it was always quiet and safe, but now we’re not able to go for evening walks. It’s not safe to be out when it’s dark.”

Last year, artist Cynthia Landry designed an anti-drug mural to be hung on Fort Providence’s old RCMP boathouse on the final day of National Addictions Awareness Week.

A message on the mural stated: “Your way of living is our way of suffering.”

Landry says the hamlet wants to keep drug dealers out.

The sale and consumption of illicit drugs have been problems in NWT communities for years, but 2024 begins with an increasing sense among residents that things are becoming intolerable.

The territory is heading into its first year under a new government elected in November, led by a premier – RJ Simpson – who headed up the NWT’s justice ministry for the past four years and has made at least part of his position clear.

Simpson wants to look again at Scan, legislation that would unlock the ability to use civil courts to pursue some drug dealers. Civil courts have a lower standard of proof than criminal courts, so proponents say using civil cases could lead to quicker results and more action.

Scan stands for Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods. Simply put, the legislation – versions of which are in use elsewhere – would allow communities, in Simpson’s words, to “shut down buildings that are being used to sell drugs.”

Simpson has said the NWT has a “moral obligation” to look again at Scan, which failed to pass the last time it was brought up in the territory, in 2007, partly because of fears that residents with scores to settle might weaponize it against each other.

In Simpson’s hometown, Hay River, he says the drug crisis is “out of control.”

“I know the RCMP are doing what they can, but the tools they have traditionally used to combat drugs and gangs – those over the years have been eroded by changes to the criminal code, decisions of the Supreme Court,” Simpson said in October while on the campaign trail.

“And so as a territorial government, we need to look at what we can do to give the RCMP and communities tools.”

Other options include introducing some form of Civil Forfeiture Act, which exists in most southern provinces and allows courts to order that property like cash, cars or homes be frozen – or forfeited – if it can be demonstrated that people either gained that property from crime or are using it to commit crime.

Simpson has kept the role of justice minister alongside his new title of premier.

MLAs sit for the first time in February, the point at which the new government’s priorities are likely to be outlined. The drugs crisis is expected to be high up the list.

‘You have got to leave’

In the meantime, Indigenous leaders are watching the crisis unfold and looking at their own options.

In Fort Resolution, Chief Louis Balsillie of the Deninu Kųę́ First Nation held a meeting with RCMP and Métis counterparts last fall to discuss drugs in the community.

“We just said that enough is enough and we want something done,” Chief Balsillie told Cabin Radio in December.

“The RCMP came through and started to crack down by stopping vehicles and watching for these people that are coming to the community.”

Balsillie says a recent increase in patrols not only helped to catch those responsible for bringing drugs into the community, but also put forth a strong message.

“Be prepared to face the consequences if you’re going to deal with drugs,” he said.

“As a new premier coming into the role, I’m hoping that [Simpson] deals with all the issues in the past, how the RCMP don’t have much control.”

Sahtu Dene Council Grand Chief Wilbert Kochon said dealers have long arms and find ways to bring illicit drugs into communities, no matter what measures leaders try.

Like Balsillie, Grand Chief Kochon said he had found it hard to work within a system where, at times, he perceived RCMP’s “hands are tied.”

“It is challenging. I think a lot of people are into it. They find ways and they have a pipeline … The system seems to kind-of protect them more than honourable ones,” Kochon said.

RCMP have recently indicated that some drug dealers are moving into the homes of vulnerable NWT residents, making it harder for police to identify problem houses or take action.

Chief April Martel of the Kátł’odeeche First Nation has noticed that. Chief Martel feels drug dealers are becoming comfortable in many NWT communities, despite attempts to disrupt their trade.

Martel says she and other local leaders are trying to take direct action on their reserve, one of only two reserves in the territory.

“Here on the reserve, it’s different. If somebody comes in and they’re trying to make a home with drug dealers, right now, me and the council are right there. We tell them, ‘You have got to leave the community, got to get out of here.’ We engage in that right away,” she said.

“I won’t tolerate it. As long as I am the chief here, I will not tolerate drugs coming into this frickin’ community.”

Treatment centre question

Alongside targeting drug dealers, the NWT’s politicians are also tasked with working out how to support residents who are struggling with addictions.

Martel, for example, says there are not enough resources to support the recovery of young parents in the Kátł’odeeche First Nation who are exposed to drugs.

The First Nation was the home of the last residential treatment centre to operate in the NWT, the Nats’ejee K’eh centre, which closed in 2013. Ministers have said not enough qualified staff could be found to work there, the centre couldn’t always take in people at the right time, and there were “confidentiality issues.”

The question of whether or not to build new treatment centres in the NWT has burned for years. Successive health ministers have said those centres will suffer the same issues as the last one and that sending people south is the best option, if steps are taken to improve aftercare when they return home.

However, new health minister Lesa Semmler, an Inuvik MLA, has expressly stated that she believes in building treatment centres in the NWT. A majority of the MLAs forming the new government have said the same thing.

If the incoming government embarks on a significant shift in policy regarding drugs and addictions treatment, how should that be rolled out?

Dr Marguerite Tracy has been working as a family doctor in Australian Indigenous communities for more than 20 years.

Tracy said isolated Australian communities suffer much of the same harm through illicit drugs. In Australia, she feels the imposition of solutions on communities by federal and state governments has been disastrous.

As an example, Tracy points to The Intervention – also known as the Northern Territory National Emergency Response – in which the Australian government imposed various restrictions on the Northern Territory’s Indigenous peoples, including complete alcohol bans in some communities and a “quarantining” of some people’s welfare benefits.

The Intervention lasted for five years and was deeply controversial. The Northern Territory’s own government opposed it and the Australian Human Rights Commission said the federal government did not properly consult the affected communities, despite the report on which The Intervention was based calling for “genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities.”

“What has been most successful, usually, is where the solutions come from the community,” said Tracy.

Taking a different example, she said one community set up its own rehab centre for youth to combat concerns about solvent abuse.

“Young people could go and be supported to cease using substances, gain some other skills in a culturally safe environment, and then return to the community,” she said.

Despite the success of that practice in one place, Tracy said, the same can’t be applied to other communities with the expectation of identical positive results.

Consulting Indigenous people directly on what works within their community is the best way to curb the supply of illicit drugs, she said. In the Australian state of New South Wales, that means community-controlled rehabilitation services designed to meet the needs of Indigenous people and backed by government grants.

There, she said, treatment centres offer cultural activities involving the likes of smoking ceremonies, art and music. Unlike a regular rehab centre, where use of phones or contact with family members isn’t allowed, these centres don’t have similar restrictions.

Those kinds of rules are “very traumatizing” for communities where “connection with family and community is right at the top of the list of needs for well-being,” she said.

The new NWT government has one more week of orientation before committee meetings begin in mid-January.

The House sits for the first time in earnest on February 6, marking the earliest opportunity at which issues can be debated in public or legislation introduced.

Two days of continued priority-setting among MLAs are earmarked for February 10 and 11.

Ollie Williams contributed reporting.