Brenda Simmons is happy to see her son’s name at the top of a new monument in Charlottetown’s Joseph A. Ghiz Memorial Park. But she would still give anything for it not to be there.
The iron sculpture erected by the P.E.I. chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is in the shape of the island, broken into three pieces.
“It’s to commemorate the way impaired driving breaks up communities, families and lives,” Simmons told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of White Coat, Black Art.
On June 12, 2020, 27-year-old Jacob Simmons was riding a bike on a country road near the family farm when he was struck and killed by an impaired driver who later admitted to having 13 drinks at home that day before getting behind the wheel.
Jacob Simmons was a keen marathon runner who had added biking to his training shortly before being struck and killed in the early evening hours of June 12, 2020. (Submitted by Brenda Simmons)
Six years later, in June of this year, P.E.I. released a sweeping alcohol strategy aimed at preventing tragic outcomes like Jacob’s – as well as the more everyday outcomes of heavy drinking, like cancer, heart disease, and cardiovascular disease. The province says the recommendations will come into effect in the months and years to come.
Though P.E.I.’s overall drinking rates are on par with Canadian averages, advocates for the strategy point to a culture on the island where heavy drinking is normalized.
One statistic that hits close to home for Brenda Simmons is that P.E.I.’s impaired driving rates are nearly three times the national average. For her, the fact that the province is mostly rural, without public transit or Uber, is not enough to explain its prevalence.
“I would challenge you to find someone on this island who [cannot] say… yes, this happened to someone that I can name personally,” she said.
The strategy
Dr. Heather Morrison, P.E.I.’s chief public health officer, says alcohol is “very present” in the province.
“Alcohol is very mixed in with our social culture, our community culture.”
Her work on changing P.E.I.’s drinking culture goes way back, she says. After a good friend was killed by a drunk driver in middle school, Morrison got involved with the first chapter of Students Against Drunk Driving in Atlantic Canada.
“I can’t remember not really thinking about the harms associated with alcohol,” she said.
P.E.I. Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison is targeting how much Islanders drink, rather than telling them not to. “I had someone recently say to me, ‘I’m so glad you don’t come out and say I cannot drink, but I’m really glad that you’re telling me I should drink less because now I’ll listen,'” she said. (Brian Goldman/CBC)
Morrison shepherded this alcohol strategy through five years of planning and consultation with more than 1,000 Islanders. She also worked with other government departments responsible for the pricing and sale of alcohol, public awareness, public safety and impaired-driving enforcement.
The strategy consists of 16 recommendations geared to approaching the problem from all angles, says Morrison. These include things like screening for high-risk drinking during medical appointments as well as targeted programs for things like reducing alcohol consumption among youth and monitoring those with fetal alcohol syndrome.
They also include a review of just how easy it is to buy alcohol, which could include reducing the number of stores or adjusting their operating hours. Currently 80 per cent of Islanders live within 10 minutes of a P.E.I. Liquor Control Commission outlet.
Morrison is hopeful the strategy’s focus on reducing consumption — rather than quitting altogether — will be key to its success.
The province released an alcohol strategy with recommendations aiming to improve public health and community safety and ease pressure on the health-care system. CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin spoke with P.E.I.’s chief public health officer, Dr. Heather Morrison, to find out what it means for Islanders.
“We’ve tried to keep that emphasis around, there are harms associated with higher levels of drinking,” she said, pointing to a “Less Is Best” billboard encouraging Islanders that reducing their drinking by any amount is a step in the right direction.
Thousands of hospital visits
Dr. Trevor Jain says he sees the impacts of high-risk drinking every shift in the emergency department at Charlottetown’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
In fact, research shows it contributes to 7,000 emergency department visits and hospitalizations on P.E.I. annually.
“When you think of alcohol, you think of catastrophic motor vehicle collisions, and we see our fair share of those,” said Jain.
Dr. Trevor Jain is hoping that the new alcohol strategy’s goals around “educating folks that alcohol is not a benign drink” will mean fewer patients coming to his ER at Queen Elizabeth Hospital suffering alcohol harms. (Brian Goldman/CBC)
But he says the heavy toll of alcohol presents itself in all kinds of other ways, too. When White Coat, Black Art paid a visit to the hospital earlier this month, Jain said he was about to go see a patient in alcohol withdrawal who needed help with symptoms.
What Jain calls the “culture of alcohol abuse” on P.E.I. has a more insidious side, too.
“It’s like a spider web, right? It just doesn’t affect the individual; it affects so many people around them. So although alcohol is a disease, it’s a disease that’s a contagion.”
Jain says he thinks the new alcohol strategy takes an excellent approach.
“Public health grabbing this by the horns… is going to help a lot of people,” he said. “It falls within that preventative medicine kind of matrix, and I think it will be extremely helpful to our local community.”
A model for other provinces
Adam Sherk, who co-authored Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, released in 2023, said other provinces should take note of the breadth of P.E.I.’s recommendations.
Sherk, senior scientist for the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), also noted that P.E.I.’s strategy is more actionable than reports or plans from some other provinces, like B.C. or Saskatchewan, which he called “a little softer and not as directive.” Some provinces have not released any strategy on reducing alcohol harms.
As someone who researches alcohol-caused harms both in Canada and internationally, as well as the alcohol policies that might be able to mitigate those harms, Adam Sherk calls P.E.I.’s alcohol strategy “a very strong contribution to the alcohol policy landscape in Canada.” (James Clay, CISUR)
Sherk says one of the best parts of P.E.I strategy is the recommendation to make boozier drinks more expensive, basing pricing on alcohol content, rather than the overall liquid volume of the drink.
Take two different canned beverages currently on P.E.I. liquor store shelves as an example. Lone Oak Vodka Seltzer and Black Fly Vodka Iced Tea are both 473 ml and cost $4.99. But the Black Fly has almost double the alcohol, seven per cent versus four per cent.
The alcohol strategy’s recommendation is to make the Black Fly more expensive, essentially eliminating “high bang for the buck products — very cheap alcohol that draws people into problems,” said Sherk.
Reducing the ‘alcohol deficit’
Morrison says the strategy also takes aim at the economic toll of P.E.I.’s drinking culture.
While alcohol sales on the Island pull in around $70 million per year in revenue, direct alcohol-related costs are estimated at over $131 million per year, according to data from the Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation.
P.E.I.’s new strategy calls for a direct investment of three per cent of net alcohol profits back into community, education and harm-reduction efforts.
Brenda Simmons says she’s happy to see that. She works at roadside spot checks with the RCMP, where she and other members of MADD put a human face to the deadly consequences of drunk driving.
Simmons working at a roadside spot check in December 2024. (Connor Lamont/CBC)
She recalls one shift where all three officers accompanying them became tied up with impaired drivers — two identified through roadside screening and one who fled before reaching the checkpoint, requiring the third officer to give chase.
Simmons says she’s all too aware the tragedy she experienced might have been repeated had the officers not been there.
“It’s beyond being a shame. Shame doesn’t do it justice,” she said.
Dr. Morrison says it’s the grief and passion of people like Simmons that keeps her motivated to see P.E.I.’s alcohol strategy implemented in specific and measurable ways.
“That’s what helps us get across the finish line, and reminds us every day of why we need to keep doing this work.”
