Toxic drugs, gangs and hope: Meet the people fighting Canada's opioid crisis

Kyle Arnold knows how to help people trying to recover from drug addiction. He's been there himself.

Arnold is a program coordinator at PACE, a drop-in centre in Thunder Bay, Ont., that provides a safe space and some comfort to many of the people in the city who don't have homes, are addicted to drugs, or simply need a place to rest.

Arnold, who stopped using drugs almost five years ago, has a lot of compassion for the people that come through PACE's doors.

"If you walk down the road and you look for the guy that's 130 pounds, strung out, that everybody said would never get clean — that's who I was. I had no chance, I was done, I was dying," he told CBC's The House as part of a special episode on the opioid crisis.

"I got clean," Arnold told host Catherine Cullen. "That's why, with everything in my heart, I know that anybody on these streets can do it. Because there's nothing special about me that's any different than any of them. Nothing."

That's a sentiment shared by his colleague Vanessa Tookenay, who is also in recovery.

"It's important to share that part of ourselves, right? Because I'm just like everybody in the room here. The only difference is I just don't use drugs," she said.

Canada is experiencing an epidemic of overdose-related deaths, due in part to an increasingly toxic drug supply. While it's among the country's hardest hit communities, Thunder Bay is just one of many grappling with the consequences of severe addiction.

Fatalities associated with drug overdoses surged during the COVID-19 pandemic right across the country. In Ontario, for example, deaths nearly doubled — from just under 1,600 in 2018 to almost 3,000 in 2021. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, over 38,000 people have died in Canada from opioid-related overdoses since 2016.

Arnold and Tookenay said that the key to their recovery was access to detox and treatment — something they say is in short supply in Thunder Bay. The city has just 25 detox beds for drugs and alcohol.

Paramedics Jameson Shortreed and Kescia Yeomans, who work for Superior North EMS, see the opioid crisis in Thunder Bay at ground level.

They said that over the past five years, they've seen the number of opioid-related calls soar from around 20 a month to roughly 100 in some months.

"For me, it's disappointing and it's frustrating because you can see what the solution would be and action [is] not being taken," said Yeomans.

"Thunder Bay is a beautiful city. It has a lot to offer ... We don't want to be known as the murder capital, the drug capital, anything like that. So I feel like if people can understand that it is a [matter] of funding and resources and things like that ... The solutions are there. We just need people who are in power to make those proper ... right decisions."