Q+A | Harm-reduction expert Zo Dodd on the Whitehorse shelter inquest, and what comes next

Zo Doddsays she was "a bit surprised" by a seeminglack of urgency in the recommendations from the jury at this month's coroner's inquest in Whitehorse but also not surprised.

"The problem with inquests is that they don't bring what families and those who've lost loved ones need, and what they're looking for," said Dodd, a Toronto-based expert on harm reduction and shelter policies.

"And I think that, you know, that was reflected in the recommendations, that when they just look at more training you know, you'll never feel satisfied with the outcomes of an inquest."

On Thursday, the six-person inquest jury decided that the deaths of four women Myranda Tizya-Charlie, Cassandra Warville,Josephine Elizabeth Hagerand DarlaSkookum at the Whitehorse emergency shelter in 2022 and 2023were accidental. The jury also issued eight recommendations, largely aimed at improving training and policies at the shelter.

Dodd, who grew up in Whitehorse,testifiedat this month's inquest as a harm-reduction expert. She spoke to host Joseph Ho on CBC's Yukon Morning about the inquest, the jury's recommendationsand the needto address the ongoing crises of homelessnessand toxic drugs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The jury actually came back with its recommendations after less than eighthours. Were you surprised by that?

I was. In an inquest I was involved in before,the Chapman inquest [in Ontario in 2018], ittook several days. There was a lot of negotiating back and forth between lawyers and others who were also working with the jury on recommendations. And so I was a bit surprised that they came back so soon. And I think there was just some things that were missing from the recommendations.

But I also understand that it's a hard role that the jury is in, to try to understand how all these systems operate and to listen to all these different voices to try to figure out what are the best recommendations. Also, the inquest scope is narrow, and so there's areas that I'm sure the jury would want to make recommendations about, but would be told they couldn't.

So let's talk about the recommendations themselves. You mentioned that there might be some things missing from them.

I think, like, an urgency.

The deaths are really glaring.We've been in an overdose emergency for almost a decade in this country. Whitehorse has had lots of loss, and I think that arecommendation could have been like, this is an emergency that we're in and so that has to be expedited, likewhat are going to be the policies, what are going to be the practices those need to be implemented right away so that more people don't die within the shelter.

I think also just recommendations regarding the care of the clients was missing from that. And also like, training at peoples'lived experience there should have been a recommendation about that, like who's going to do that training?

And I'm sure that there's family members and others who are feeling like, there were people responsible. So how were they held accountable for the deaths of their family members?

"We need to try and move forward": Whitehorse holds march for inquest families

5 months ago

Duration 2:09

The coroner's inquest into four deaths at the Whitehorse Emergency Shelter has ended. Yesterday the jury found that Cassandra Warville, Myranda Tizya-Charlie, Josephine Elizabeth Hager and Darla Skookum died at the shelter of accidental causes. It also issued recommendations for Connective, the non-profit that runs the shelter. As well as for the Yukon government. Virginie Ann has the details.

You spoke about the need for clear, defined rules and policy for staff and guests. What happens when those things are not in place?

There can be a lot of grey area and interpretation. Those policies and procedures are really important, and directives for staff to be able to understand their roles, their expectations, their jobs, as well as for the people who are staying at the shelter to also understand what those policies and procedures are.

So a policy and procedurelike doing washroom checks every 10 to 15 minutes, making sure that's something that is followed that has to be followed up with management, making sure people don't miss that.You know, that kind of error can cost human life. We know that an overdose, in an emergency, it can take minutes for somebody to die. So you know, we can't just wait like, an hour. These checks have to be done regularly. We know people are using in spaces, and we know this from the amount of overdoses that the shelter has had.

One of the deaths, the woman died from being laid on her stomach, her face was in a pillow. So that should have been a directive that people had, was,you cannot lift people but that was happening in the shelter. And so those policies always have to be re-evaluated and people need to be able to follow those and have that guidance. You wouldn't put someone on their stomach, you would put them in the recovery position. And this goes with when to call EMS.

When people don't understand the policies and procedures, because it's a lot of casual staff that are working there, then it really is management's role to make sure that these things are being followed and to be checking in with staff.

I think also there wasn't good policies around critical incidents and debriefing. Those are extremely important to the integrity of the organization, the health and well-being of everybody who is working and staying at the shelter.

Those are the types of policies and procedures that have to be written up, everyone needs to know them. There are just some things we cannot ignore.

As somebody who has studied harm reduction and shelters across the country, is there anything about the Whitehorse emergency shelter that is unique, that stands out?

Not really. I mean, this is a situation that's been happening all across the country. And, you know, there are reasons why people do not want to stay in shelters. Those reasons happen all across this country, where people just don't feel safe. They don't feel welcome. They don't feel protected. They don't feel...they're being, you know, asked to leave because they're using substances, or they're being told they can't come inside because they're under the influence.

And I think a lot of shelters were built with this idea that we don't want to make it a comfortable place for people to be coming into. We don't want them to stay long. The reality is, people are staying longer because we have a crisis of homelessness in this country because of the financial-ization of housing. And there's immediate needs that people have.

I think a lot of shelters also have a lot of Indigenous people living in them. You know, Indigenous people should not be homeless on their own land. So there has to be priority given to housing Indigenous people, and in communities they want to live in and be in.

So this is not unique to Whitehorse, but I think what makes it unique to Whitehorse compared to a city like Toronto is that the opportunity to actually implement recommendations from an inquest are much higher when there is public pressure to do so. So we have inquests in Ontario, but unless the public is pushing for those recommendations to be implemented, they tend to not have any teeth and they don't necessarily get implemented.

But I think we need to change how we're delivering services to people. People who are accessing those spaces should feel comfortable, staff should be building relationships with the people who are entering those spaces, because theyare communities of people and that is common across the country.

I'm hoping you can shed a little bit of light on trends that you're seeing with harm reduction in shelters across the country. What are you seeing?

I think that organizations are wanting to implement different kinds of interventions and they're unable to because of where they're located. I think there's a lot of hostile governments, provincially, who are disinterested in addressing the housing crisis that we're in, and also addressing the toxic drug death crisis. So as this toxic drug death crisis continues to rage on across the country, we are seeing more and more deaths, we're seeing more and more people living with grief and loss that also brings more death.

Across the country, it is becoming challenging to address all of the crises that we're in, and tohave tried to recover from the COVID pandemic, the lockdowns. This sector in particular, harm reduction, is underfunded, under-resourced. There are places and communities that don't actually have robust harm reduction. It's really limited. There are opportunities, let's say, if you wanted to have a supervised consumption site within a shelter, to get an exemption from the federal government to be able to do that, but the federal government then does not fund the actual supervised consumption site within the shelter.

So we see this all across the country and something has to change. We need these emergency services resourced, but we also need funding to go into other kinds of programming that could be really helpful to people, including the building of housing.

The inquest recommendations call for various reviews. If they are implemented, how confident are you that things will change for people at the Whitehorse shelter?

The organization has to take it seriously, the recommendations not just reviewing, but implementation. It has to work with its partners, all of the Yukon First Nations that are affected,as well as the partners like Blood Ties Four Directions, organizations that have done well in the community to support people who are using substances. We can always learn from our local community and that's where we should be looking to.

You know, this [Connective Support Society] is an outside organization that's come in to run this shelter, and sometimes what's bestis our local communities being able to do that work ourselves. So I hope that it's reflective, I hope that Indigenous people are hired there, that people with lived experience aremore involved and hired there.

There are many different interventions that could be put in place to support the people that are staying at the shelter. The safety of the people within the shelter has to become paramount. There's a lot of focus on the shelter and what happens outside of it, and I think what gets missed is the actual people that are accessing these services. You know, there's the long history of colonization and intergenerational trauma in the Yukon, that cannot be ignored and separated from the reality of the people who have died. And I feel extremely sad for those families who have lost their loved ones because these kinds of deaths are preventable.

And so my hope is that organizations will work hard to support people,see people with dignity and humanity, autonomy, self-determination, and care, and that the practices that they put in place will make a turnaround for the organization itself. If they don't do this, andthey continue to put people's lives at risk, then they hold that responsibility. It istheir responsibility to be taking care of the people that are staying there.

People will die, but people should not be dying from our human errors.