Ms Fiona Wilson:

The one thing we agree on in British Columbia is that we do not want to put people in jail by virtue of a substance use disorder. Everything that flows from that, however, is about the details. What I would say is this: you have to make sure that police officers are still empowered to address matters of public consumption through legislation, whether it is a ticketing regime or otherwise. Whether the police want to be the resource that is interacting with people who use drugs, because I do not disagree that, in many circumstances, there is a more appropriate response from the health side, the reality is that it is the police who get called at 2 a.m. to deal with those sorts of situations or to come to the park or the business that is complaining about people using outside its front door. The police need to be armed with the ability to deal with matters of public consumption because, otherwise, people can use wherever they want. We have seen in British Columbia that that was a bit of a disaster, to be frank. I would make sure that police officers still have the lawful authority to address matters of public consumption, whether that is through legislation, much like there might be with respect to liquor or, in our case in British Columbia, cannabis, or whether it is through being creative around the consequences of being arrested by police, meaning there is diversion to a health pathway as opposed to a criminal justice one. Whatever the committee decides to do, my number one takeaway on decriminalisation is that you still have to make sure the police are empowered to deal with matters of public consumption.