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The Current Transcript for October 16, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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KEN DRYDEN: Gary Bettman is the central decision maker in all of hockey. He is smart enough and capable enough to do what needs to be done. And the great thing about hockey is that there are answers.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hockey great Ken Dryden says the buck stops right in front of Gary Bettman. He points out there is no one in professional hockey in any capacity with the sheer power of this particular NHL commissioner. And that Bettman can change the game and the rules to protect players from concussions and the lethal consequences of CTE. In a moment Ken Dryden joins me to make his case. Also today..

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[Sound: sirens and crowd murmuring]

VOICE 1: I've never seen a scene like this ever before. All the buildings around here have collapsed. They were close to 200 people in these buildings. I hope everyone is OK.

AMT: Everyone was not OK. In fact throughout the weekend the death toll continued to climb after Saturday's massive bombing on the streets of Mogadishu. As loved ones mourn the death of more than 300 people, as hospitals struggle to help the hundreds who were wounded, others are asking why a decade of trying to stop insurgents in the Somali capital has been so devastatingly ineffective. We’ll hear that analysis in just over half an hour. And he's 24-years-old in Ottawa addicted to heroin but he cannot get treatment to end his addiction without a detox bed.

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VOICE 1: My risk here now is getting denied. Only thing I’m looking forward to is to get clean.

AMT: If he had the money he could go to a private detox treatment. And that has one doctor arguing government decisions to fund supervised injection sites more than treatment centres merely enables the addictions of the poor. Others profoundly disagree, we will bring you both views in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti this is The Current.

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'Concussions affect a life': Ken Dryden wants hockey rules changed to save players' lives

Guest: Ken Dryden

SOUNDCLIP

NEWS ANCHOR: Former NHL defenseman Steve Montador has died. Police say it was of natural causes but because he was only 35 there will be an autopsy. Montador played for six teams over ten seasons but was permanently sidelined by a concussion three years ago.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well that's how it sounded on the CBC News in February of 2015. Within the years Steve Montador’s family would sue the National Hockey League. They alleged the NHL had failed to keep Steve safe and that crucially failed to inform him about the long term effects of brain trauma. Steve Montador had chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. It is a lethal disease linked to concussion sustained through years of play. And as it has in the National Football League, CTE has taken a devastating toll on NHLers. Ken Dryden is a legend of that league. He is a six time Stanley Cup winner with the Montreal Canadiens, a former president of the Toronto Maple Leafs and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. But he's got some tough questions for the league and its commissioner Gary Bettman. Ken Dryden's new book is entitled Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey. And he's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

KEN DRYDEN: Thanks a lot Anna Maria.

AMT: How was it confirmed that Steve Montador had CTE?

KEN DRYDEN: It was a couple of months later that almost immediately his brain was donated to a researcher named Dr. Lily Hazrati. And there's a process that takes some time before the actual examination can take place. But within a couple of months that whole process, you know, was complete. And with the cuttings of the brain of the slides that are created, and finally for Lily to look into her microscope she saw the CTE.

AMT: You need an autopsy to be certain.

KEN DRYDEN: You do. There is not any way of determining that now.

AMT: What was life like for Steve in the year before his death?

KEN DRYDEN: It wasn't a good life the year before. And that's one of the things that is so much a part of the story, is that concussions affect a life. They don't just affect the ability to play a sport, but what happens when you're away from the ice or away from the field. What is your day like? And Steve was experiencing a lot of the symptoms that people with head injuries have, memory problems, anxiety, depression, difficulty of focusing, difficulty in terms of making decisions, and putting the pieces together and sorting things out. And so in the end it was really a lousy life, and a lousy life lived at the age 35. And the kind of thing that, you know, all of us or most of us at some point may experience in people who are very much older. And you kind of come to not accept it and not be happy with it, but understand that somebody who is older than 80 or 85 may have a dementia or Alzheimer’s or something, and have those kinds of problems. But you don't expect it in somebody 35.

AMT: And also he was just experiencing that withdrawal from a career. Really a career that he had really had, you know, since earliest childhood.

KEN DRYDEN: He had played all of his life. That hockey life had been at the core of what he had been doing since he was five or six-years-old. And so there is this transition when you are not around, you know, doing something that you know and you know that you're good at and you get your satisfactions from, and you can get down and you can get depressed and you can start, you know, using alcohol more often, and there's lots of lots of examples of all of that. And so it's very easy at that particular moment, for even Steve, let alone his friends, let alone family, let alone others, just start saying to themselves it's a problem of transition. That's what it is, it's transition. Well one of the saddest parts of the whole thing is that Steve died thinking it was all his fault.

AMT: Mm.

KEN DRYDEN: Because this was, you know, that he could have prevented this kind of stuff, this downward spiral. As opposed to really his brain had been affected and he was becoming a different person.

AMT: Before all of that what kind of person was he?

KEN DRYDEN: He, [chuckles] he's somebody who absolutely sort of lit up a room. And one, he was a good looking guy, but he had a kind of physicality and charm to him and he was smart. I mean, he was somebody who pretty early on realized he could be an experiencer, he could do almost anything, go almost anywhere, in part because he was a hockey player. That he had been you know a kid who played junior hockey Well you're a star if you're playing junior hockey and you can in the local town you're a star. So, you know, you can kind of do anything and meet anybody. Well then the local town becomes a bigger city and a bigger stage. And Steve was smart enough early on enough in his life to realize that he had the time, in the summers he had the money that he was making as a player, that if he was interesting and experiencing things he could do it.

AMT: How would you describe him as a hockey player?

KEN DRYDEN: He was probably never the best defenseman on even his minor hockey teams. He wasn't in junior, he went undrafted in the NHL draft. He was signed as a free agent by Calgary. He spent two years in St. John playing for the Calgary farm team there, and then gradually played a few games in the NHL and then more games. But he was what is described as a five six defenseman. The one two defensemen, they're the stars. They're the ones who play on powerplays, kill penalties, play 25 minutes a game. Then there are the three four defensemen, who are sort of solid, solid offensively, solid defensively. They'll play 20 minutes a game. The five six defensemen play about 15 minutes a game. And the challenge of a five six defenseman is that you're not far away from being a seven defenseman. And the seven defenseman is the is the healthy scratch, is the one who doesn't play, or the eighth defenseman who is now down in the minors. So you're always kind of on the edge of things, but at the same time every team including Stanley Cup winning teams has five six defensemen on their team. And Steve, you know, made a career out of being a five six defenseman. He played over 570 games over ten seasons, and was somebody who his teammates would say he was a great teammate. You know, that they loved him being around the team and he loved being around the team.

AMT: I have a clip from the 2004 Western Conference Finals between the Calgary Flames and the San Jose Sharks. Let's listen to that.

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ANNOUNCER: Here’s Iginla.

[Sound: slapping stick sound]

ANNOUNCER: Jarome Iginla looking for a chance. Coming late, Montador.

[Sound: crowd cheering]

ANNOUNCER: Scores. Steve Montador is your hero in game one. As the Flames strike first in the Western Conference Final. His first ever Stanley Cup playoff goal. And he’ll never forget it.

AMT: Ken Dryden, tell me about that goal and what it meant for Steve Montador?

KEN DRYDEN: Well it was the beyond dream goal. So this was really his first full season in the NHL, but he played maybe only about half the games. And so the playoffs begin, and Calgary had not made the playoffs for a few years and they started the season not well. And then they got hot. And so they ended up making the playoffs. The playoffs began, and Steve wasn't dressed. Well then an injury happened and he played in the seventh game of the first round and played regularly from that point on. And Calgary started on this run and they kept knocking off teams that had finished higher than they did in the regular season. And they find themselves in the conference finals against San Jose and [chuckles] it’s in over time. And Steve Montador is not a big scorer, and it's in overtime. And Jarome Iginla the star for Calgary, was carrying the puck into the San Jose zone and San Jose was making a change and all of a sudden Steve saw open ice and so he headed towards the net. And as the announcers sort of described later, he started slapping his stick on the ice like he was slapping a beavertail on the ice. I mean and the coach Darryl Sutter said you could hear him all the way to Sacramento. He wanted that puck. And so the pass was made, he went in all alone and he scored. And interesting in that clip, and of where Chris Cuthbert talks about how it's something that he'll never forget. Yes, that was absolutely true. But what was also true is his teammates never forgot it either. When I talked to them who played on that team Rhett Warrener, Jamie McClennan had gone by that time, Marty Gélina, they remember that moment so vividly because they had such an affection for Steve. And it was like, it was the goal that went in, but it was the look on his face, it was the look on his eyes, it was just total joy. And it’s something that they have never forgotten either.

AMT: It just underlines what you said about him being such a great teammate. They loved him.

KEN DRYDEN: Yeah. Yeah, they really did.

AMT: Do we know how many concussions he sustained during his time in the league?

KEN DRYDEN: No. And nor even before that time. I mean, before in minor hockey, and as I try to get at in the book, you know, that it's probable that he had his first around the age of 12. And then maybe a couple of more in minor hockey, and then in the NHL. One of the hardest things to read is that when, you know, that when you get a blow to the head sometimes it's from a puck or from a stick and there is a cut. And so all the attention goes to the cut. I mean, that oh he got this bad cut over his eye, and so the treatment is on that. Well it just so happens that he feels pretty lousy and he feels lousy for a week or ten days. And that in fact the more significant injury may well have been the blow rather than the cut. And so he had a few documented concussions and others that may have been, and again if you're a player, and Steve, you know, when he went started seeing doctors and they would ask him his history, they would always refer to it as as he a very unreliable historian for his own, you know, past. And because you don't pay much attention to it. I mean, if you're a player you play, you know that's what you do. You see an injury as another opponent. And so you've got to find a way of rising to the challenge of that opponent. And the way you do it is you kind of forget about the obstacle, which is the injury.

AMT: So is that why he would go to the rink day after day even when he was injured?

KEN DRYDEN: It's in part. I mean, it's one of the challenges in terms of dealing with any player. I mean, you know, Steve was that way. But Steve, you know, in most ways wasn't different from the vast majority of players. Is you want to play, you feel like you need to play, your teammates need you. The circumstances of the game need that, your coaches depending on you. The fans want you to play. And it's part of your own pride that you play. And again, it's another opponent. And so just as you rise to the occasion to play against the Stanley Cup champion, you rise to the occasion when your knee isn't quite right, or your shoulder isn't quite right, or your head isn't quite right. And you see beyond the injury, you focus on what you think is the most important thing at that moment, which is the game and of delivering the game. And we're all pretty good at cutting off most of those other symptoms. And one of the things that happens with all of these players is that in a sense they realize they have this choice. Do I want to feel lousy between the hours of 7:30 at night and 11:00 at night at home and not playing, or do I want to play, where I can forget myself during those hours, I'm not focused on how lousy I feel. I am playing. I get three hours worth of relief and release by playing. So you go out and play.

AMT: So it becomes a circle.

KEN DRYDEN: That's right.

AMT: Yeah, yeah. Well for the NHL and fans, not all concussions in hockey carry the same kind of concerns for the player who is injured. I have a clip from the 2011 Winter Classic game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals. Listen to this.

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ANNOUNCER 1: Here's Crosby, just getting into position. Did he turn and get hit, oh, yeah.

ANNOUNCER 2: Oh did he ever. Steckel got him.

ANNOUNCER 1: Wow. You talk about blindside, didn’t look like Steckel was looking at him but there’s your description of a blindside. Let’s watch 39.

ANNOUNCER 2: He’s looking for the puck.

ANNOUNCER 1: He’s trying to go up ice, I don’t think that was something that was premeditated, but definitely shoulder on his head. And he’s still doubled over as he makes his way off the ice guys, so. He’s rattled. No question about it.

AMT: So soon afterwards, Sidney Crosby is diagnosed with a concussion. How long was he out of the lineup because of that head injury?

KEN DRYDEN: Well he was he was kind of in and out, and mostly out of the lineup for a long time, for most of, you know, most of the year. And I think he came back for a little bit but then was re-injured and the public really took that hard. I mean, and it was really interesting to see the public reaction to it. I mean, the public had been getting somewhat used to seeing players go down with concussions, with careers ending.

AMT: But this is like one of the greatest players in the world sidelined.

KEN DRYDEN: That's right. And I think it was a secondary thing as well, which was really almost the most critical, is that Sidney Crosby plays the way, you know, that, you know, it is kind of the the dream prototype of the Canadian player. I mean, this is a guy who loves being a part of the action. He goes into the hard places on the ice, he goes into the corners, he goes into the front of the net, he forces his way, he gives contact he gets contact. But it's not, you know, of the exaggerated kind I mean, that you know where he's a big basher and he gets bashed or he's in lots of fights or anything like that. No. He plays the way in our heads we imagine the best of the way in which the game is played. So if that happens to him, that's a big message. And so, you know, I think it it really hit people hard.

AMT: Well and you say the public, but parents of kids who play as well huh?

KEN DRYDEN: Yeah.

AMT: What would they be thinking?

KEN DRYDEN: Well I mean, you know, just imagine if you're a parent at home, and this isn't 50 years ago, where basically, you know, there wasn't much else to do in the wintertime. You know, if you have a son, that son may well be playing hockey. Now it's 50 years later and there are lots of other things to do in the wintertime, and lots of other sports to be engaged in. And you're a parent and you're saying to yourself well, I’d like my kid to have the experience of sports but why not soccer? You know, why not baseball? Why not volleyball? Why not basketball? Great sports. Or even out of sports, you know, why not music? Why not, you know, theatre, why not other things? And so what had never really been quite a choice is a choice. And once you get down to a choice, then the question is like do I want my kid to play? I mean, you know, that this sort of stuff seems to happen and I don't know the consequences of it. And I do know, you know, as a parent even without knowing the science, that having, you know, a wonky knee is not the same thing as having a wonky brain.

AMT: Ken Dryden, we need to pause right there for the CBC News. But we're going to continue this conversation in our next half hour. We'll talk specifically about what kind of advice you have for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman on how to cut down on brain injuries in the game. And we're also going to ask what it will mean for the league if the commissioner does not take action to tackle this problem. Ken Dryden's new book is entitled Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey. It goes on sale tomorrow across Canada. Stick around, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti you're listening to The Current. Ken Dryden picks up with me just after the news. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music: Extro]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, as an already staggering death toll rises even higher in Mogadishu, we're asking why efforts to bring stability and a little peace to Somalia continue to leave so many civilians vulnerable. And a new debate in how to confront the crisis here at home. Should we be concentrating on injection sites and harm reduction or outright treatment? We'll jump into that discussion in half an hour. But first, Ken Dryden, the NHL Hall of Famer has been with me and we've been talking about the issues he's raising in his new book Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey. If you're just joining us, you'll want to head to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent or the CBC app to catch the first part of our conversation about former NHLer Steve Montador who died at the age of 35 after suffering from CTE, the lethal disease brought on by repeated concussions. Well, let's talk a little bit about the safety of the game. Between the rules and equipment changes, has professional hockey become less dangerous for players over the years?

KEN DRYDEN: No it hasn't. And that's the, you know, that's the hope of equipment, that's the intention of equipment. But other things change as well as equipment. And so if anybody was to watch full game action of NHL games, even 50 or 60 years ago you would not believe how slow it is. And most people who watched at that time will not believe that because they were ten-years-old, and in their memory all of those great stars were going 100 miles an hour. Well they weren't. And it's not that they weren't great skaters and great players and all the rest of it. But the biggest thing was that hockey was still a game that was emerging out of what had been a no substitution game. At one time in hockey, you had to play the whole game. You know, just as you would in soccer. Well then you were able to make changes, but then players would say well, you know, why would I come off after five minutes? I mean, I used to play for 60. And so by that by the 1950s players were still playing more than two minutes every time they went on the ice. If you're playing for two minutes, you're doing a lot of coasting, you burst if you think you've got a chance, you burst if you think the other team has a chance, but otherwise you're circling and coasting. It's very slow with lots of open space in it, and not that many, you know, moments of contact. Starting in the 1970s and increasingly the game has speeded up as the shifts have gotten shorter. Now they're down to about 35 seconds on the ice. It is like watching the four by 100 metre relay as in the Olympics. You're just passing the baton every 35 seconds. The person who comes over the board, full speed for 35 seconds, pass the baton to the next, full speed full speed full speed through 60 minutes. What happens then of course is that you've got more players going after the puck full speed. There is less space, less time, more collisions and more forceful collisions because they are players moving faster. And that's the nature, the biggest change that has happened really in hockey over these years.

AMT: And so let's link that with some more talk about CTE. I want to talk about the science of CTE and brain concussions. As we were saying, CTE can only now be identified in a brain autopsy. How does that influence the decision makers in hockey about who can play and who can't?

KEN DRYDEN: Well, you know, the first thing that it does of course is that it is its own uncertainty. You know, does a player have CTE? Does a player not have CTE? And from what we know up until now and of brains that have been studied in hockey, it's very likely that a player does not have CTE. You know, that many have but the, you know, the significant majority do not. But we don't know who's who in it. That's the first part of it. The second thing is is that I think what's happened over time, and again, is one of those defenses, that first you deny, then you create doubt, then you do all the rest of it. Well then what's most recent almost is saying OK, CTE is really bad, but that in fact one we don't know whether a player has CTE. And so it's really all about CTE or not. No actually that isn't what it is. There are lots of players who end up and who probably, you know, after they die if they donate their brains and the studies are made, will not have been found to have CTE, but they will been living a number of years of their lives with depression, with anxiety, with, you know, difficulties in terms of making decisions and things like that.

AMT: With other elements of brain injury, in other words.

KEN DRYDEN: That's right. So it's not CTE or nothing. You know, that's one of the things that is so interesting to talk to, you know, neurosurgeons and neuropsychologists, is that the neurosurgeons with their technology, they can't see the evidences of brain damage including CTE. Neuropsychologists can through behaviours. I mean, and it's just as vivid as if you were seeing it through a microscope to see people doing weird things. Well if they're doing weird things chances are there's something going on there. And so it is no defense to say well we can't, we don't know if it's CTE and we can't see it on a screen and therefore somebody is fine. Well if they're not fine, there is something going on. And so it is not a defense.

AMT: In July of last year, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was interviewed by Sports Illustrated. Now we have that exchange, I want you to listen to it.

SOUNDCLIP

INTERVIEWER: Are there any changes to the rules of the game that you would consider making to eliminate the potential for head injuries?

GARY BETTMAN: Well we've got a long term record on player safety, particularly as it relates to concussions. We were the first sports league to begin to study with our players and the medical community in 1997. We were the first sports league to have protocols for diagnosis and return to play decisions. We've made equipment changes. We created the Department of Player Safety. We've softened the environment with the boards and glass. There have been numerous rule changes. This is an evolving area and it's something that we've been the most proactive than any of other leagues on.

AMT: Ken Dryden, what do you think of Gary Bettman’s response to that question?

KEN DRYDEN: I think that when you're a decision maker, you focus on all the things that you've done and then you step back and you say but what else can I do? Because I see these symptoms. I see these things happening. And so I may set up this committee and that committee and this protocol and that protocol, but if players are going down and if they are experiencing these symptoms then that really isn't quite the answer. I mean, one of the things that was so vivid in doing the book on Steve is reviewing the doctors reports after they had seen him. And so there was a team doctor in Chicago and then there were other specialists that he went to see. I thought when I was going to be reading those reviews, that I would read something that was really sort of haphazard and sloppy. And as I was reading them I was like God they really put him through a lot of tests. I mean, they asked him this and he's above average in this and a little below that but within range, and all of these things. And then I'm doing this chronologically and then I also know what's happened, what Steve is doing and feeling in between times. And eventually start reading these doctors reports and say your reports say he's fine but he's not fine. I mean, he is clearly not fine. And your best, you know, the best science you have available to you, which has generated the most advanced screening that you have, and so it's you're a modern sophisticated scientific person so you rely on that. All of that's great. The problem is he's not fine. And so the tests that you have are not up to the challenge of the whole exercise. And so the key in all of this of course is that if there is something wrong, then that's the indicator as opposed to you know what one is doing.

AMT: So how much power does Gary Bettman have to make brain injuries less common in the NHL?

KEN DRYDEN: Gary Bettman is the the central decision maker in all of hockey. For any of the really big decisions they are either made through the NHL and by Gary Bettman, or they're made with the understanding that this is probably what the NHL would want. And what, you know, what Gary Bettman would want. And he happens to be a capable guy, a smart guy, you know, somebody who now has the authority to do all of these things. I've known Gary Bettman for a long time. I mean, we didn't know each other at Cornell but we both went there and we're both I think a little bit proud of the fact that we both went to Cornell. I was the president of the Toronto Maple Leafs for seven years during the time that Gary has been the commissioner. He is there, he is in position. He's not going anywhere. This isn't something that you can say oh gee I wish there was somebody else in this position and that something would change. He's not going anywhere. He signed a new contract through to 2022. He likes what he's doing, he's good at what he's doing, and that is all the good news because he is smart enough and capable enough, and has the authority enough to do what needs to be done. And the great thing about hockey is that there are answers. That's the part that separates hockey so distinctly from football. Football is a real challenge about what the heck you do with head injuries in football. In hockey there are absolutely answers about what you do. It doesn't take much, it wouldn't take much.

AMT: You say in your book Gary Bettman doesn't need to be a tobacco baron or a climate change denier fighting against the night. What do you mean by that?

KEN DRYDEN: I think that when people don't feel as if they have an answer they run away from the problem. And the great thing in terms of hockey and head injuries is you can run towards it. And we've all been in situations where we've run away. But in this case you can run towards. You know, the situation with Steve Montador and with others, it is not fair, it is not right, and crucially it's not necessary. There are all kinds of things in life that are not fair and not right. But we can't do anything about them, so we get on with life. In this instance it's also not necessary because there are answers. And it begins with a very simple approach and thought, is no hits to the head no excuses. And you go from there.

AMT: Has Gary Bettman read your book?

KEN DRYDEN: I don't know. I mean, we met in New York about I don't know two and a half weeks ago something like that, and I gave him a copy and--

AMT: Did you get him in the elevator and--

KEN DRYDEN: No.

AMT: Point your finger into his chest. No?

KEN DRYDEN: No. We, I mean again, we've known each other for a long time, and we just sort of set it up by email that it was time to have a talk. And so we talked for at lunch for a couple of hours and I left him with the book. And as I said to him, you are the first person who is reading the final version of this book because you are the, you know, the central actor in all of this and you need to know what's there. And as we said to each other, you know, for the next couple of months are going to be a challenge for both of us. But I think we're both up to it. And so I have no idea, you know, whether he said he was going to read it, and he said he was going to read it from beginning to end. And so I don’t know.

AMT: You kind of wrote it for him didn’t you?

KEN DRYDEN: I did. All of this is not about awareness. You know, we confuse awareness with action. All of us who, you know, who don't have power, you know, and whether it's the scientist or whether it's those in the media. You know, we think we have power but we don't. Somebody else is making the decision. And we assume that if we generate awareness than those that do have the power will take that awareness and make informed decisions, and then we look around and well that doesn't really happen. So then what do we think the answer is? More awareness. So it's more articles, more studies, more or you know this and that and the other. We build the mountain of awareness so high, so unmissable, so outrageous, so humiliating, that of course something has to be done, doesn't really happen. That unless, you know, you feel as if there's a way you distract yourself to other things. I mean, one of the things I say in the book and it was to me the phrase, you know, that I love and that I've used a million times of where there's a will there's a way and all that's great, and we know it's true and we know we need it to be true. That in big tough questions it's really the reverse. It's where there's a way there's a will. And if you can't give me a way, I'm sorry but I can't generate for you the will that is necessary in order for things to be different.

AMT: So you touched on it, but what kind of changes do you think should be implemented to bring down the number of concussions?

KEN DRYDEN: You start with no hits to the head period and no excuses. The NHL has at least two mandatory rules that are interesting examples for this. One of them is that when a player is in their own defensive zone and they shoot the puck over the boards it's a penalty, automatic. When that rule was first introduced it was like this is crazy, he didn't intend to, the puck flipped, the ice is lousy, the glass is at different levels in different arenas. I mean, all of these things. Well, you know, that was a few months worth. Now it is just instinctive automatic, the player goes to the box no arguments, the game goes on. The teams get over it.

AMT: So this can happen.

KEN DRYDEN: The second one, and this is the critical one, is that in terms of a hit to the face. Now a stick to somebody else's face, an opponent's face, automatic a penalty. If the person is cut, you know, usually sort of a double minor and it could be worse than that, automatic. Same thing initially you can't do that, he didn't intend to this, it bounced off the opponent's arm his stick or something like that. No. Sorry. The important thing was the hit to the face, not the explanation of how it happened. Well you can do exactly the same thing in terms of head injuries. Whether they are accidental or intentional, whether they are incidental or significant, whether they are from an elbow or a fist or something else. It doesn't matter. The brain doesn't distinguish. That's the point is that the brain doesn't say oh well it's OK because you didn't intend to or because it was really with an elbow, you know, rather than something else. No, it's about the injury, it's about the brain, it's about the player being hit. It's about the effect, you know, of it not the cause.

AMT: Ken Dryden, we have to leave it there. Thank you.

KEN DRYDEN: Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: Ken Dryden in our Toronto studio. His new book is Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey. That book goes on sale tomorrow across Canada. We did contact the NHL to see if Commissioner Gary Bettman would comment on the issues raised by Ken Dryden. We have not heard back. That invitation remains open.

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Extremist group al-Shabab likely behind Somalia bombing, predicts terror expert

Guest: Phil Gurski

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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[Sound: honking and sirens]

AMT: A little bit of the sounds of chaos, sirens, desperate rescue efforts on the streets of Mogadishu this weekend after the deadliest single attack on civilians in Somalia's history. The death toll is now over 300 after a massive truck bomb exploded in the capital city on Saturday. All weekend people have been succumbing to their injuries. Rescue workers have been finding more dead people. Medical personnel are doing their best to help the hundreds who were injured in the blast. It targeted a busy street near key government ministries, it was in the middle of a traffic jam. If you've seen the pictures the carnage is incredible. Somalia's government blamed al-Qaeda linked extremist group al-Shabaab for the explosion. No one has yet claimed responsibility however. The Horn of Africa nation has been battling a bloody insurgency waged by al-Shabaab for more than a decade and chaos long before that. Some 20,000 African Union forces are stationed in the country to help. In the past year as attacks waged by al-Shabaab have grown more frequent, the US has stepped up its drone strikes against the group. For his analysis on all of this, I'm joined by Phil Gurski. He is a former CSIS analyst, he's the CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting in Ottawa. And that's where he is today. Hello.

PHIL GURSKI: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you make of the sheer scale of this attack?

PHIL GURSKI: This is really incredible. Our analysis this morning suggested that it's the second largest mass casualty bombing in history. But what fascinates me is that when the story first broke on Saturday, the initial reports were, you know, 20 dead 15 wounded. Then it was 53 dead. And it just kept climbing. And as you say by this morning we’re up over 300 dead and probably 300 wounded. So the sheer scale of it is almost hard to imagine. And some reports that I've read say that they're well over 100 bodies that are burned beyond recognition. So this was a massive massive terrorist attack using some, you know, massive amounts of explosives and it's almost hard to imagine what it must be like there. But this is catastrophic.

AMT: And we have heard in the news reports since Saturday just how overwhelmed medical personnel are. It's, the Somali government is blaming al-Shabaab. Is it likely this was al-Shabaab?

PHIL GURSKI: I think it was. When we talk about Somalia Anna Maria, there really are two groups, actually they're kind of two subgroups if you will, so there is an Islamic State affiliate in Somalia which is a breakoff of al-Shabab. They're much smaller and They’re concentrated more in the northern part of the country. So despite the fact that a claim has not been made to date, I'd be very surprised if this is not an attack by al-Shabaab. They are by far the bigger of the groups and they have been very active of late with both suicide bombings, there have been armed assaults against AMISOM, which is the African Union Military Mission in Somalia. And al-Shabab is even taking control of some towns, albeit briefly, when troops either flee or are not there. So I think the government's right, it probably is al-Shabab that's behind this.

AMT: Now The New York Times this weekend was saying this happened two days after the head of the US Africa Command met with the president of Somalia, and the Somali defense minister and army chief resigned. What do you make of that?

PHIL GURSKI: We have to be careful with in terms of timing. This may not this may have taken weeks if not months to plan. So it may not be necessarily a direct reaction to the visit by the senior US official. As you mentioned in your introduction, the US has been behind some drone and airstrikes in Somalia over the past weeks and months. So it's hard to tell at this point whether or not the attack is direct retribution for a US visit or any kind of movement within the Somali government. Sometimes terror attacks take a long time to plan. So we won't know more until perhaps we get a claim of responsibility or some kind of investigation by the security service. But I just read this morning that the head of Somali intelligence service will be likely resigning soon so that may in fact introduce more delays in the investigation.

AMT: And you mention the African Union that has a mission in Somalia, Ethiopia was part of that, it then pulled out. Ethiopia of course being just seen as an enemy of Somalia. The fact that they were in there at all.

PHIL GURSKI: Well this is a damned if you do and damned if you don't kind of situation. So we know that in fact my latest book The Lesser Jihads, I talk about how the presence of foreign forces in a land where there is a jihadist movement is often a great rallying cry, it's a recruitment for them. So the fact that AMISOM is there, and it’s largely Kenyan and Ugandan troops now that Ethiopia has withdrawn, they are foreign forces. They are non-Muslim forces for the large part. And groups like al-Shabaab and Islamic State can say hey look, another case where a foreign army comes in and starts killing Muslims. On the other hand, if AMISOM we're not there and if the US were not active in its drone strikes you'd have more terrorism. So it's almost like we're there there's terrorism we're not there there's terrorism, and there's no clear answer on the way forward.

AMT: What kind of insurgency though can justify the deaths of hundreds of civilians in the name of its cause? Could there be blowback here?

PHIL GURSKI: Hard to say. Again, it's all about interpretation right? So from our perspective as westerners, as Canadians, we see this and we say how could anyone do this to innocent people? The way that, and I've looked at Islamist extremism for, you know, going on two decades now, they can justify in a sense that these people are our enemies. And in the worst case scenario, groups like Islamic State will actually dehumanize their victims. These are not real people, they're not true Muslims. And in fact the vast majority of victims were probably other Muslims, and they can say well they don't believe in what we believe, they don't follow us therefore they're expendable. I'm not trying to be crass or dismissive here. But when you read the ideology and read the statements, they have this way of basically making the other a person that it's OK to target.

AMT: And yet people did take to the streets this weekend too, upset obviously about what happened.

PHIL GURSKI: Well absolutely. The vast majority of Somalis do not support al-Shabab, they don't support Islamic State. They may have issues with AMISOM and they may have issues with US drone strikes. We know that drone strikes go awry. We know that innocent civilians have died in airstrikes in other places like Afghanistan or Pakistan as well. But no, there's no justification for this by any human standard as far as I'm concerned. So I'm not trying to say that it's justified, I’m just trying to understand the motivation behind why al-Shabaab would do this. But this is a heinous act of terrorism. And it's, you know, as you say, it's really hard to contemplate that this number of victims.

AMT: OK. Phil Gurski, thank you for your analysis on this.

PHIL GURSKI: My pleasure Anna Maria.

AMT: That is Phil Gurski, former CSIS analyst and now the CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk consulting in Ottawa. Stay with us, in our next half hour desperate for detox but the beds just are not there. We're going to hear from the frontlines of the opioid crisis in Ottawa. And questions raised about how the money governments are spending on this should be spent. Should it go to treatment? Should it go to harm reduction? How do you balance how much money goes where? Not everyone agrees. We'll hear that discussion. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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Opioid crisis needs treatment not harm reduction, says addiction specialist

Guest: Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla, Donald MacPherson

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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VOICE 1: We're going to call the detox on Montreal road. And We're going to try and see if we can get in there and get a bed right now.

[Sound: thunder]

That's Matthew St. Jean standing in the rain in an Ottawa Park. He's at a place where people with addictions can go to shoot up under the watchful eye of volunteers like him. For the past two weeks he's been trying to get a detox bed for a 24-year-old by the name of Jonathan. Jonathan has been showing up for weeks. And what he wants is more than a clean needle. He wants to get better.

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JONATHAN: My childhood was a long and depressing childhood. That’s what kind of started the whole thing. And my dad passed away when I was young. I guess I was like a month old when he died. No structure in my life, you know.

AMT: Jonathan was raised by his grandmother in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He started taking pills when he was 15. The CBC's Amanda Pfeffer talked to Jonathan at that same safe injection site in the park.

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AMANDA PFEFFER: So when did you find yourself going from pills to heroin?

JONATHAN: I think the past like two years. Like I’d say when I moved to Ottawa.

AMANDA PFEFFER: Yeah.

JONATHAN: Because Thunder Bay you can’t really acquire that drug.

AMANDA PFEFFER: What was the turning point for you that you wanted to change?

JONATHAN: Pretty much when you have nothing. And my uncle died, and then my grandpa died, and I had a lot of friends overdose. So just seeing overdoses and me potentially could have been one, you know. It makes you want to change, you know. Because I’m young, you know. Don’t want to waste my life I guess.

AMT: Jonathan says he wants to turn his life around. He is taking methadone but he says what he really wants is treatment that will lead to his recovery. There are only 26 detox beds in Ottawa. Jonathan says he knows what it's like to be clean and that methadone alone will not be enough to get him back there.

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JONATHAN: I've been on that road for a while. You need more structure, like more stabilization, like more in my life I just have that and that’s not enough. I need like counselling, and I got to deal with this stuff, like what started this all. And I was clean for like two years and I relapsed after my uncle died there. Something traumatic happened in my life and it took a turn for the worse I guess. Now I'm stuck in this mess.

AMANDA PFEFFER: What is your worst fear now?

JONATHAN: My worst fear now is getting denied recovery. The only thing I'm looking forward to is to get clean I guess right now. And understand a pause until I get my assessment done and wait for an opening to get into a facility.

AMANDA PFEFFER: What happens if it keeps on the way you are right now, without that help.

JONATHAN: I’ll gradually get worse. I’ll probably die. I don’t know probably overdose, I don’t know.

AMT: Matthew St. Jean says that the wait for a bed in cases such as Jonathan's could mean the difference between life and death.

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VOICE RECORDING: Welcome to the Ottawa withdraw management centre. Please hold, while I transfer your call.

MATTHEW ST. JEAN: This happens quite often, quite often.

[Sound: phone ringing]

MATTHEW ST. JEAN: So we got the voicemail again. And again, and again and again and again. Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Especially when, you know, like you have somebody that wants to do the right thing for their life and try and get better and the resources aren't there.

AMT: Matthew St. Jean, volunteer worker there. Thanks to Amanda Pfeffer and the CBC Ottawa for bringing us Jonathan's story. For all the resources going to address Ontario's opioid crisis very little has actually gone to treatment. This past summer the province announced 220 million dollars in new funding with 2.2 million going specifically to the city of Toronto for treatment, city of Ottawa I'm sorry, for treatment and harm reduction. But complaints are emerging that the bulk of spending to date has gone to harm reduction, leaving people looking for treatment in the lurch. Jessica is a recovering addict struggling to find one of the few detox beds in the city of Ottawa.

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JESSICA: When I knew that I wanted to get cleaned up. I was at the Cornerstone shelter, and there was this woman that had spoken to me about the detox centre, so I had called in. It took me about three days to get in to call every hour. So on the woman's side there's only four beds and once you move to level two there's only five rooms with two beds. I don't know what's it like on the men's side, but to me for all the women that are out there and that want the help and want to get detoxed and want to get into a treatment program like rehab, there's not enough beds. The place is not big enough to help out all the women and the men that want the help.

AMT: Well Jessica is now waiting for an assessment so she can get into an in treatment program that would work for her.

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JESSICA: I've been sober now for eight weeks. I've been waiting for two months just to get an assessment with OAARS. So I have the assessment on October 30th and then I have to wait two months to six months before I can get into rehab. So I'm going to be waiting on the waiting list till then. The rehab centre that I will be going to is a 21 to 28 day program. And if they feel that that's not enough for me then I will stay longer.

AMT: That's Jessica, a recovering addict in the city of Ottawa. In the fight against the opioid crisis some important decisions have to be made with how to spend millions of dollars. My next guest would like to see more of it spent on services to treat addictions rather than fund supervised injection sites. Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla is an addictions medicine specialist. He's the founder and medical director of Recovery Ottawa. He joins me from Ottawa. Hello.

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Hello.

AMT: What are the options for people who want to receive treatment for drug addiction?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Not to sound too negative but there really aren't any. Basically listening to your intro there, I think that pretty well encapsulates what I've been trying to tell all levels of government for the last 25 years. And Jessica, who I know, not only is she waiting to get this assessment from OAARS which is the Ottawa Addictions Access and Referral Service. You can't get any help without seeing them first and the delays to see them is very long. But what she doesn't understand is that if you're on methadone or suboxone in Ottawa, there aren't any beds anyways once she does that assessment. And the guy who is wanting this young man to go to the detox, what he doesn't realize is that detox is not a medical detox. So there are no doctors or nurses at that detox, it's basically like a big motel. So the treatment of addiction and mental health is essentially non-existent in 2017, and that's the Liberal government at this point is certainly to blame for that. They're essentially telling everybody that the treatment of addiction is injection sites. And so basically what they're saying is harm action, which is another term for that is palliation, or in some levels an assisted suicide. What's happening is the people in Ontario and Canada have been sold this idea that the treatment of addiction is to continue injecting drugs and basically you're hopeless and you have a medical illness but there's no medical treatment.

AMT: OK so let me just unpack what you're saying there. You're saying that a supervised injection site is the same as palliation, palliative care meaning?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: 100 per cent, 100 per cent.

AMT: What does that mean? What are you saying?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: OK so let's say you have a 27-year old-daughter like Jessica, who is injecting heroin on a daily basis. Firstly, you have to understand that Jessica has to get that heroin from somewhere. So she has to do illegal activity to obtain that money for the heroin and typically in young women it's prostitution. Plus inside there there's also fast and selling of drugs and other inappropriate behaviour. So these people are forced to do all this. Then they buy the product on the street, which nowadays is tainted and potentially harmful just in itself. Then they go into a trailer or a tent and inject their own product, which is full of contaminants that could cause bacterial endocarditis, all kinds of infections, you know, death in general, and then they're released. And so they got to go out and do this again. So basically harm reduction is another way of saying OK these people are hopeless, they don't have a chance to get better, there is no treatment for them anyways. So as a society what we'll do is just enable them to continue using the drugs and continue the illegal behaviour and their outcomes will either be death or jail or hospitalization briefly in an ICU or whatever, then they would get bumped back to the street.

AMT: OK you have a very different view than many. I've got a clip I want to play for you. Sarah Blythe is a harm reduction and super supervised injection site advocate in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. This is why she says more money is needed and it's good to spend money on harm reduction.

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SARAH BLYTHE: Giving people drugs like heroin three times a day, you're not going to see the overdoses, you're not going to see the brain damage that people are getting, you're not going to see criminal offenses are going to be cut down. Ambulance rides, hospital stays, the morgues are full, the ambulances are going nonstop. You know, the crisis creates so much burnout in staff and that's costly. The crisis is hugely costly as it is. We're looking at how are we going to do this? And I think the main way is to get people the drugs they need.

AMT: Well what's your response to that?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Well again, we’re not in Vancouver we’re in Ottawa. Secondly I'm not sure why she would be deemed an expert in addiction medicine and treatment. I mean, I write prescriptions for methadone and I’ve treated over 2,000 people over the last 30 years. I've worked in treatment centres, ran treatment centres, worked in medical detoxes, we don't Anna Maria, we don't have those facilities. So basically what this young lady is saying is that, she's basically talking about what methadone was 20 years ago people can't, you know, they're in withdrawal and they can't get withdrawal, so let's give them something. So we do that now very nicely. Methadone and suboxone are great drugs. Our problem is not so much giving them medication like suboxone, our problem is like the young man was saying, he's got so many problems OK? This is a medical problem that needs medical help.

AMT: Right. OK so let me ask you if the young man we heard could pay for private treatment, he'd be in treatment now wouldn't he?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Correct. So there’s a saying--

AMT: So that’s your point.

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Well yeah. Rich people get treatment poor people get harm reduction. That's it. Listen, I've been doing this since the seventies, there's not one new residential treatment bed in Ottawa since the seventies. In fact there's less. And also my patients on methadone and suboxone can’t access any of the existing ones. So when I used to work in the seventies and eighties and early nineties in Ontario, we could send our patients like a young man like that, I could get him to a US base full level treatment program with all of the things he needs in terms of physicians, psychiatrists, counselors, you know, dietician, spiritual program, safe housing. That's what we need. And these facilities don't exist unless you can pay for them in Canada. So what happens for that young man and also my patients is she’ll never see the inside of a program like that. Why? Because they don't exist in Ontario. The government stopped sending people to the US in the eighties, early nineties, and they were supposed to use all that money that they sent, they were using to send to the US, they were going to build their own treatment centres, which they never did. All they did is establish levels of bureaucracy including the LHIN now. And what they do is basically say OK there's no space, there's no treatment, there's no availability to get a psychiatrist or a psychologist or an addiction doctor. So they demedicalized the treatment of addiction. And I always say to people Anna Maria, like if you for example were going blind right now in you're right eye, and I say OK you could go to a tent where we'll give you a white cane and some sunglasses, or we'll take you to the Sunnybrook Hospital and see a retinal surgeon. Which one would you go to? So the reality is when I do this type of work and I ask people specifically with their own children, your daughter is injecting, she's prostituting, she's injecting heroin into her neck. Do you really want to put her in an injection tent or do you want to put her in our collaborative comprehensive treatment program where she'll get better? She'll stop using drugs, she'll deal with all her medical problems, her mental health issues, her life issues, and that takes money.

AMT: OK. Let me just ask you.

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: And a facility.

AMT: Right. Let me just ask you then, what about those people who relapse and then inject? Wouldn’t they need to be, like don't you need both? Don't you want them to be safe if they?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Not really. Like I mean, an injection site again, the Liberal government has like, they've like I was saying it's a smokescreen to tell taxpayers that we're doing something. They're not really doing anything. It's an enabling behaviour where you're encouraging people to use medication that is killing them rather than saying listen, using the drugs is only part of the illness. You know, it's a disease, addiction is a chronic progressive potentially fatal illness.

AMT: And you want them to spend the money there?

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Well no.

AMT: On that, on the treatment centres.

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: The government has to create these centres, it's bricks and mortar. It's like, you know, in Ottawa when I started in Ottawa, there was no children's hospital. There was no heart institute, there was no cancer clinic. OK? There was no eye institute. So now we have all these things because the people, the government, the Boers, all said hey we need a specialized place for treatment of cancer or the treatment of your heart. So we didn't do that for addiction. What we did was we closed the facilities, we closed the psychiatric emergency, we put all these people into the street, and we kind of in a way saying, you know, maybe nobody will notice. I don't know. But it's--

AMT: Doctor.

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: Ten to 15 per cent of the population that have this illness. And people are not getting treatment for a treatable illness.

AMT: Dr. Ujjainwalla, we have to leave it there but thank you for your perspective.

DR. MARK UJJAINWALLA: You're welcome.

AMT: That is Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla, he's addictions medicine specialist and the founder and medical director of Recovery Ottawa. He joined us from Ottawa. Well there may be no single surefire approach to combating the opioid crisis. My next guest is a proponent of harm reduction and that route. Donald MacPherson is the director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, also an adjunct professor at the Centre for Applied Research and Mental Health and Addictions at Simon Fraser University. And he joins us from Vancouver. Hello.

DONALD MACPHERSON: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What's your response to what you just heard from Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla?

DONALD MACPHERSON: Well my first response is that he's absolutely right on the one hand, and in that there is a real problem with a coherent treatment system in Canada. We're certainly struggling with that in British Columbia as well. But it's not either or, you need both and. And harm reduction is a part of the treatment system. So it's more his style of pitting one service against another which is not productive.

AMT: Well at the same time, he would likely argue that governments are pitting one service against the other because he can't get the service that he's looking for.

DONALD MACPHERSON: Well a significant amount, if you look at the Ontario budget or the British Columbia budget, a significant amount of funding goes into mental health and addictions. Where that falls is an issue when you don't have the right amounts of investment in the right places. But it's not about harm reduction or treatment, it's about getting the best minds together in Ontario and coming up with the right places to put the money. And much of that money will go to the lower threshold end or should go to the lower threshold end of the treatment and harm reduction system, especially in the moment in history when we're going through such an overdose crisis.

AMT: And you know earlier we heard from a woman named Jessica in Ottawa. We have another clip of her. She was struggling to find a detox bed. As a person who is addicted she is wary of injection sites. Listen to her.

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JESSICA: These injection sites are pretty much, I feel to me that they're promoting drugs. To me I find it’s a promotion to do drugs instead of actually taking that money that they built the injection sites with and giving us rehab. How about actually helping us, the ones that want the help, the ones that need it?

AMT: Don MacPherson, what do you say to that?

DONALD MACPHERSON: I'd say that certainly her analysis of injection sites is not what the evidence would bear out in terms of encouraging people to use drugs and those sorts of things. Harm reduction services are some of the most studied services because they are contentious, in terms of they exist in an environment where abstinence is driving a lot of the philosophy around certain types of drug treatment, when in fact reducing the harm through substitution programs, whether it be methadone or heroin assisted treatment or hydromorphone assisted treatment or supervised injection sites, are well studied and cost effective interventions. That does not mean that they’re only way to go. And no one is arguing that. It's preposterous that the treatment systems in 2017 are not more coherent, are not more evidence based. We have a patchwork of treatment across the country. Having said that, we have a total patchwork of harm reduction services across the country. The harm reduction gets a lot of time and airtime, but there's really not that much of it out there. You're talking about a tent in a park in Ottawa that's run by volunteers. Now come on, that's not real widespread comprehensive approach to this problem. These are people who probably have the same complaint about the system as Dr. Ujjainwalla has.

AMT: So do we have a good picture nationwide of the effectiveness of addiction treatment programs such as the one that Dr. Ujjainwalla talked about?

DONALD MACPHERSON: Well I think we have some good treatment programs across the country some good approaches. But if in 2017 in Vancouver you have addiction medicine doctors saying we don't have a broken system, we don't have a system. That seems to be what Dr. Ujjainwalla is saying, the system doesn't exist. It's been chronically underfunded over the last 25 years. And we certainly need a lot more funding for drug treatment and harm reduction. The irony is most of the money under our system of drug prohibition goes to law enforcement. And Vince Cain, the Chief Coroner of British Columbia in 1994 during our first overdose epidemic, he strongly encouraged us and governments to shift resources from the criminal side criminal justice side to the public health side. And it hurts me that we have drug treatment people and harm reduction people fighting against each other, when in fact harm reduction is a part, should be a part of a comprehensive treatment system.

AMT: So what do you think federal and provincial governments should be doing more of to prevent drug deaths?

DONALD MACPHERSON: Well they should be taking this issue a lot more seriously and not just throwing money at the same old places. They really need to re-evaluate where they're putting the money. For example, housing is a huge problem. The federal government really needs to think seriously about getting back into the housing business. But part of me Anna Maria, says you cannot change this problem without looking at the box we're working within. And the box we're working within is a flawed drug policy. People are desperate and they can't get the substances that they are wanting to get. And this is causing many deaths across the country. We are withholding pharmaceutical products from people who could be not dying from fentanyl overdoses.

AMT: You're talking about decriminalizing the use of these addictive drugs.

DONALD MACPHERSON: Decriminalization and regulation of these substances is really the only way we will work our way out of this problem. We will not treat our way out of this problem. We will not harm reduce our way out of this problem. We need to really rethink the way our drug control system in Canada, and get people the help they need whether it's treatment, harm reduction, and housing.

AMT: Donald MacPherson, thank you for your perspective.

DONALD MACPHERSON: Thank you.

AMT: Donald McPherson, Director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. He joined us from Vancouver. Let us know what you think as you listen to our guests talk about this. You can tweet us we are @TheCurrentCBC, find us on Facebook, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. That's our program for today. Now earlier I was speaking with hockey great Ken Dryden. His new book will be out tomorrow it is called Game Change. If you missed our conversation, find it on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Listen to our podcast or find it on the CBC Radio app, free from the App Store or Google Play. To end things today, I have one more story from Ken Dryden going back to his first NHL playoffs season, which turned out to be the first in an historic run with the Habs. This is Ken Dryden elaborating on an anecdote he shared at the funeral of Jean Beliveau. He quipped that the Montreal Canadiens legend had been his first roommate and that he had been Beliveau’s last. We’ll leave you with that. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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KEN DRYDEN: I had just come up to the Canadians about a month before the playoffs began, and it was a complete surprise to me and to everyone else that I was the goalie to start the playoffs. And in Montreal at that time when we were at home we didn't stay at home, we went up north in the Laurentians and stayed at a hotel there called La Sapinière. And Jean Beliveau was assigned to be my roommate. And I remember [chuckles] the room, it was at that time there was one double bed and one single bed. Well I at least knew enough which bed was mine. [chuckles] But I think that what he was probably asked to do by the coach, who was Al MacNeil and the manager of Sam Pollack, was just keep an eye on this guy. You know, that this is a pretty tough situation. I mean, he's only just been called up, he's never been in the playoffs before, and just see that he's OK. And Jean being Jean did that in the nicest way. And the nicest way for a teammate to do it is to not ask you if you're OK. Just to kind of keep an eye, just, you know, as the good parent is sort of almost out of sight from their kids but is aware of what's going on. That was how Jean was, and that if I was OK he wouldn't either say anything to me or, you know, just almost nothing to the coach or the manager. If he sensed that there was something wrong then he would say something. But he was my roommate for, you know, at that time there were three rounds of playoffs, we went for six weeks or so. And so when we were on the road it was in a hotel and when we were at home it was in the Laurentians. And he retired at the end of that year with a Stanley Cup. [laughs]

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