Grieving Ottawa mothers want police to trace lethal drug sources, charge dealers

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Three Ottawa mothers who lost children to drug overdoses have launched an advocacy group seeking to hold accountable those people who are poisoning street drugs with lethal substances.

The group is called Trace the Lace, and it wants police and federal authorities to change the way they approach drug overdoses now categorized as “accidental.”

Those overdoses, the organizers say, should be labelled as suspicious deaths and investigated as potential homicides since drug dealers know that they’re endangering lives by lacing street drugs with lethal substances such as fentanyl, carfentanil, xylazine and nitazenes.

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They want drug dealers held criminally responsible for the rising death toll wrought by Canada’s toxic drug supply.

“I don’t want any more parents to go through what we’ve had to go through,” said Natalie Bergin, the founder of Trace the Lace and the group’s spokesperson.

Bergin’s 21-year-old son, William Bernard, died of a drug overdose in April 2022. Bergin said her son bought what he thought was Xanax from a local dealer in Barrhaven to treat his recurrent anxiety.

Instead, according to the forensic toxicology report on her son, the drugs he ingested contained flubromazolam, a potent synthetic benzodiazepine sometimes known as “liquid Xanax.” A depressant, flubromazolam has no medical use and can lead to prolonged sedation and, sometimes, death.

William Bernard was a straight “A” student at Algonquin College, where he was studying aviation management, and a licensed pilot. His mother returned home from work and found him dead in his bedroom on the afternoon of April 1, 2022.

Ottawa police did not launch a homicide investigation in the case. According to Bergin, officers told her William had willingly consumed the drugs and had accidentally administered a lethal dose. The police said they could not establish that a criminal offence had taken place.

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Bergin, however, had no doubt that a crime had been committed against her son and that belief led her to found Trace the Lace earlier this year.

“I was just shocked the police wouldn’t investigate his case and find the source of those drugs. It felt like his life didn’t matter,” said Bergin, a social worker at The Ottawa Hospital.

Bergin understands that police do not have the resources to pursue every overdose death in Ottawa — there were more than 200 in 2023 — so she wants to see a federal RCMP task force established to trace the source of tainted drugs in Canada. She believes many of the lethal substances can be linked to organized crime.

Bergin has made presentations about Trace the Lace to the Ottawa Police Services Board and Chief Eric Stubbs. She said she received compassionate hearings and positive feedback from both.

She’s now talking with drug experts and politicians to understand how federal laws can be changed to help police find and arrest those who are contaminating the drug supply.

“I see it as a way to give notice to drug makers and traffickers that there are consequences,” Bergin said. “They’re getting away with this now … and making money doing it.”

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Although it’s infrequent, police in Canada have charged dealers in connection with the deaths of drug users and secured convictions in court.

Last June, George Brazier, 54, of Orillia, Ont., was convicted of manslaughter for selling a fatal dose of fentanyl to a Wasaga Beach man, James Glover, recently released from a drug rehab program. The 31-year-old was found dead in the bedroom of his parents’ home.

“(Brazier) has contributed to untold misery,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Cary Boswell said in sentencing Brazier to eight years in prison.

Last February, in Simcoe, Ont., Derrick Adams, 42, a drug dealer who gave a teenager the fentanyl that killed her, was handed an eight-year prison sentence for manslaughter and trafficking. The victim, Rachel Cook, was 17 and struggling with addiction.

At least one other case is before the courts. In April 2023, Niagara Regional Police charged a 23-year-old woman from Grimsby, Ont., with manslaughter in connection with the overdose death of an older woman. That woman died from the effects of protonitazene, a synthetic opioid considerably stronger than fentanyl.

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Supt. Jamie Dunlop, leader of the Ottawa Police Service’s Serious and Organized Crime Directorate, said all overdose deaths were treated seriously by police in this city. The coroner is called and the scene is held to preserve evidence, he said.

General assignment officers review the file and follow up with the coroner, but to pursue a case they require physical evidence — drug remnants — and a witness that can tie them to a specific dealer.

“It’s not feasible or practical to launch a homicide-level investigation with every overdose death,” Dunlop said in an interview. “To hold someone to account for it is very difficult.”

Seized drugs are sent to Health Canada for testing to understand their chemical make-up, Dunlop said, and to help trace their origins. New drugs, he said, tend to move from West to East in Canada.

“I certainly appreciate what the families involved in this epidemic are going through,” Dunlop said. “They want to know, ‘Why is my loved one dead? Who gave him the lethal dose of this?’”

But those answers, he said, are often unclear or unavailable. To build a legal case, police have to be able to find the drug dealer involved and establish that the specific dose sold was the one that killed an individual.

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“There’s some big difficulties in holding people accountable for drug deaths, and that’s really the tragic part,” Dunlop said. “You have to be able to prove the drug is in his system can be linked to the drugs he bought. It’s a huge hurdle.”

According to figures compiled by Ottawa Public Health, more than 500 people in the city have died from opioid-related overdoses in the past three years.

The epidemic shows no signs of abating. Preliminary data shows 136 people have died of suspected drug overdoses in Ottawa during the first six months of 2024, putting the city once again on a record pace for drug-overdose deaths.

Across Canada, the opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of more than 44,000 people since 2016. Federal data shows the vast majority of those deaths (80 per cent) have been connected to fentanyl and its analogues — powerful synthetic opioids that can be fatal even in small doses.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug-related deaths claimed 107,941 American lives in 2022. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were responsible for 70 per cent of those deaths.

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In its 2024 national drug threat assessment, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) said that country’s drug landscape had shifted from plant-based drugs such as heroin and cocaine to synthetic, chemical-based drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamines.

It has produced “the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the U.S. has ever faced,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said earlier this year.

Two milligrams (mg) of fentanyl is considered a potentially lethal dose, the DEA said, but pills tested by the agency’s lab have been found to contain as much as nine mg of fentanyl. Pills tested in the lab averaged 2.4 mg of fentanyl.

The DEA seized 79 million fentanyl pills last year — triple the amount from 2021.

The national drug threat assessment report said prosecuting drug dealers had been complicated by their embrace of technology. They use encrypted phone apps to advertise and sell products and often deliver drugs with the help of unwitting courier services.

In Ottawa, there are similar challenges, Dunlop said. “Drug dealers have taken hold of the whole Uber phenomenon,” he said. “They have become very modern in dispensing drugs.”

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Bergin said her son, William, was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder two years before his death. He was prescribed citalopram, which proved effective, but, when his anxiety recurred, he sought immediate relief.

“My son was a man with such a bright future,” Bergin said. “He was struggling with his anxiety and chose something he thought was a quick fix. He made a big, big mistake. But he’s dead, while the person who supplied it to him is still out there. That infuriates me.”

Trace the Lace, she said, also plans to advocate for more government-funded drug treatment programs, and an end to the stigmatization that can make it hard for drug users to seek help.

Andrew Duffy is a National Newspaper Award-winning reporter and long-form feature writer based in Ottawa. To support his work, including exclusive content for subscribers only, sign up here: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe

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