In late May 2017, Christopher Van Camp was rushed to the hospital by ambulance, where he proceeded to spend five days in a coma before being slapped in handcuffs.
His mother, Lauren Laithwaite, who’d hurried to meet him, was locked out of his hospital room shortly after he woke up. She saw her son conscious only briefly before he was taken from the hospital to one prison, then another and, finally, to Saskatchewan Penitentiary on June 6, 2017.
He was found dead, at 37, the next morning, brutally murdered by his cellmate.
But Van Camp should never have been sent back to jail, said Laithwaite, because Canada’s Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act came into force just weeks before he took a toxic combination of benzodiazepines, fentanyl-laced cocaine, cannabis, and amphetamines. The act amended the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act so that nobody who sought or helped someone seek emergency medical assistance for an overdose would face charges. The intent was to keep people alive.
Three years later, with the Canadian overdose crisis on track for its deadliest year yet, experts say the confusion and uncertainty sowed by the law is undermining its effectiveness. For the Good Samaritan law to work it has to be unambiguous, said Dr. Lori Regenstreif, an addiction medicine physician who works in correctional settings in southern Ontario.
“It shouldn’t be if this then that; it shouldn’t be an algorithm. It should be this person is ill… let them be treated. It should be that simple,” Regenstreif said.
Except it wasn’t simple. So Laithwaite, who was relieved after her son’s killer was convicted last spring (he’s now appealing), is hoping her civil suit against Corrections Canada and a letter campaign to the justice minister will clarify the law: “Nothing can bring (him) back, but we can certainly save lives in the future.”
The act, as it is used now, does not inspire much trust among the drug users it purports to help.
“Mistrust of the law itself and confusion around its protections and limitations—and how it is being enforced in real life—were found to be ongoing issues,” said a June report from the HIV Legal Network that surveyed drug users in five cities across Ontario. The report zeroed in on one case where a person who said they overdosed and was trailed to the hospital by a cop and arrested “as soon as (they) started to wake up from the Narcan.”
Cases like that are “really telling,” said Sandra Ka Hon Chu, director of research and advocacy with the HIV Legal Network. The network had people in the study recount calling 911, stressing it was an overdose, asking for an ambulance, and—despite the act—still getting cops.
“You don’t have police showing up for someone with a heart attack,” Chu said, “so why exactly are they showing up at overdose scenes and collecting information?”
Problems with the Good Samaritan law have been apparent since it was a bill, but Chu said at the time there was a sense that it might help “chip away at the facade of criminalization as being effective, (help) undermine the idea that the war on drugs is protective.”
The act “is saving lives and has saved lives,” Ron McKinnon, the Liberal backbencher who introduced the bill, said via email, but added, “The legislation does not go far enough.”
Lauren Laithwaite with her sons Christopher (L) and Ronnie (R)
McKinnon, the MP for Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam in British Columbia, said he’s written to the Ministers of Health and Public Safety “imploring them” to implement the recommendations in the HIV Legal Network’s report. Among them: that police stop attending overdose calls unless specifically requested, and that the law be amended to protect greater swaths of the population and be “uniformly recognized and understood by all first responders.”
“It is utterly irresponsible for law enforcement and government agencies not to apply the law as written and the legislation’s spirit and intent,” McKinnon said.
But that is what has happened in Van Camp’s case, said Tavengwa Runyowa, the Regina-based lawyer representing Laithwaite. He doesn’t think the confusion around the act, at least in Van Camp’s case, is real so much as it’s a government attempt at deflection.
“In this case, the meaning is clear, especially when applied to Chris,” Runyowa said. “He was on parole. He overdosed on drugs. He was not trafficking them or otherwise engaged in a criminal activity.”
While the government’s summary of the law might be phrased in a way so as to suggest the parole protections only exist if the underlying offence was simple possession (Van Camp’s was armed robbery), Runyowa said the law—as written—carries no similar caveats.
“The law says nothing about what crime preceded the parole as an eligibility criteria,” he said. “Conditions cannot be read into laws unless specifically provided for in the text. Parole is parole.”
Van Camp was granted parole with the condition he not consume. It’s a health and human rights issue, said Jen Metcalfe, executive director of prisoners’ legal services with the West Coast Prison Justice Society—one she encounters a lot in her work.
That the federal government hasn’t stepped forward to address confusion and concern raised by Laithwaite, the HIV Legal Network, Families for Addiction Recovery, and so many others, “shows a real lack of goodwill,” Metcalfe said. “It’s such an easy way to protect people’s safety, to make sure they won’t be penalized when trying to get help when someone’s in crisis.”
A spokesperson for the Parole Board said decisions about revoking parole would not solely come down to whether or not a person consumed illegal drugs.
A spokesperson for Corrections Canada declined to comment on Van Camp’s case, specifically citing “ongoing litigation.” However, she said, “for offenders supervised in the community, the law does not extend beyond simple drug possession. This means that if the offender had taken drugs, they would not be protected from a violation of a condition to not consume drugs.”
That’s in keeping with the agency’s statement of defence in response to an ongoing civil suit Laithwaite filed alleging the federal agency failed to keep her son safe: One line about how the act “does not apply to the facts of this claim.”
But the problem with a parole requirement that a person not consume drugs is that a brain rewired by addiction can’t tell if you’re trying to abstain for health reasons or because a parole officer wrote it as a condition of getting out of prison, said Regenstreif.
Christopher Van Camp, seen in an undated family photo.
Drug use traps your brain in a “disease loop,” she said—a person is “not really making a decision; they’re just responding to a very physical drive.” That loop, especially after someone is newly released from prison, puts them at heightened risk for overdose, she said.
One study from Ontario found that one in 10 deaths from drug toxicity happen within the first year out from behind bars. The first six weeks are some of the worst, Regenstreif said—especially if the person, like Van Camp, is trying to be abstinent.
“You’re letting someone walk out a door without their illness being treated and they’re vulnerable,” she said. “That population is always going to be higher risk and they’re always going to be undertreated until we do a better job of it.”
According to the government’s statement of defence, Corrections Canada decided that the severity of Van Camp’s overdose warranted a return to prison—even if only briefly. But in, out, in, out is a negative cycle, said Regenstreif.
“Why are we chasing after people? It’s almost like you’re setting people up to fail by criminalizing all these behaviours that are really an illness or disease.”
Rachel Rappaport, press secretary for Justice Minister David Lametti, offered the government’s “heartfelt condolences” to Van Camp’s family, but declined further comment citing the litigation. Both Rappaport and the Department of Justice punted questions about the act and its use to Health Canada. A spokesperson there offered general statements about the government’s attempts to raise awareness of the act, but no specifics about its application for people on parole. Statistics Canada does not track its use.
Van Camp, the eldest of Laithwaite’s two sons, was born April 24, 1980, at the same hospital where he was treated after his overdose. Laithwaite was 16 years old at the time and nixed adoption plans in favour of teenage motherhood when he was one week old.
But after her empathetic, hockey-playing kid started using drugs, mother and son got locked in a cycle. He’d call, have conversations “laced with lies,” and ask for money to use for drugs. Later he’d call wanting help getting sober and Laithwaite would do her best to get him into a program, to drive him to rehab. Her father was an alcoholic, so Laithwaite thought she understood the stigma, the using, not using, using again, but, “I never knew what addiction was until (Christopher).”
Lauren Laithwaite with Christopher when he was a young boy.
When Van Camp was released in April 2017, he moved in with his younger brother. Every morning as he took the bus to Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, where he was learning to be a crane operator, he’d call his mother to say good morning. On May 24, when Van Camp didn’t call, Laithwaite asked her younger son to go check his room. He couldn’t be roused.
In the hours after Van Camp came out of his coma, Laithwaite said he was groggy and childlike, communicating in thumbs up, head nods, and two-word answers. But there is one brief conversation etched in her brain.
“Do you want to live?” She asked him.
“Yes,” he told her.
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