'If you are a business owner, I suggest security': Prince Albert businesses bearing brunt of social issues

A Prince Albert business owner says people suffering from addictions and mental health issues are making it difficult to run his businesses.

“When I first came back into the family business, it would be about three years ago. I noticed a difference in the town I remember and the town I was in immediately,” said the managing partner of the Venice House Restaurant on 2nd Avenue G.R. Yannacoulias.

He says he’s had someone defecate in the entrance of his building and on another occasion there was a man barking in his business.

“I’m kind of not equipped to handle a guy that big, but I kind of had to buck up and pretend I was while I asked someone else to phone the police,” Yannacoulias said.

He says he has to pick up needles in the back alley and the area surrounding the building on a weekly basis.

“You find people using the needles right here in the parking lot and hiding behind the dumpsters in the back. They’re people, so you can talk with them, so I can say, ‘hey you can’t leave that there, please, like I have to pick that up if you leave that there.’ It’s not like they can’t hear that,” he said.

He says people suffering from addictions, mental health problems and homelessness need help — and the social disorder has a negative impact on the community.

Yannacoulias would like the province to provide security guards to businesses that are frequently disrupted by social disorder. 

He says he expressed his concerns to the MLA for the area Alana Ross about ten months ago and no changes were made. He also spoke to a manager from the Saskatchewan Health Authority about the problem but the manager didn’t offer a solution either. 

“It used to be at 2:00 a.m. the bars would empty out and you used to have to get your staff ready for what comes with that, and now at 2:00 in the afternoon is one of the times when I’m most on high alert around here,” said Yannacoulis.

He says the 2:00 p.m. time corresponded with the hours of the services that helps addicts.

“I think the province just sort of missed a step in its plan. And it didn’t consider the community at large to be stakeholders and didn’t consider the impacts on anyone except the patients in the program,” he said.

At a public meeting of the Prince Albert Business & Resident Advocacy Group (PABRAG) meeting Oct. 24 the co-owner of the Cornerstone Tim Hortons, Cheryl Sander, says she’s had to hire private security guards to ensure the safety of people in the area after an Oct. 23 incident where a man wielding an ax threatened people in the drive-thru.

Sander calls the incident “stressful” for her and staff.

“The same gentleman that brought the axe through our drive-thru … was back at Tim Hortons today at 3:20 and to me, that was a huge problem. I was shaking when I found out,” Sander said.

She says the Prince Albert Police Service responded quickly to the incident but she was disappointed with the man’s quick release.

ADDICTIONS EXPERT

A Prince Albert doctor Leo Lanoie has been working in the field of addictions for 24 years. He works in jails such as the Saskatchewan Penitentiary and has clinic hours at the Prince Albert Co-operative Health Centre Community Clinic in the city’s downtown.

He says methamphetamine use is one of the main causes of the surge in mental health issues.

After hearing about Yannacoulias’ encounter with the man who barked like a dog, Lanoie says it’s likely the fallout of meth use.

“That kind of bizarre behaviour comes from crystal meth use and crystal meth patients will often have psychosis. A huge proportion of them will tell you that they see forms, they hear voices,” said Lanoie.

He says it’s the most widely used street drug in the area because it’s cheap to buy and the high lasts a long time. He says most meth is also now laced with fentanyl to make it more addictive.

“They get that tactile hallucination, so they feel like they've got bugs under the skin and they just pick holes in their skin. It's a terrible drug,” he said.

People high on meth are known to exhibit repetitive behaviours and do the same action over and over again.

Cocaine lasts about three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half at most, he says, while crystal meth is long-acting — it's got a half-life of 30 hours.

“And so when you're high on crystal meth, you're high for a while.”

He speculates that some of the “irate behavior” business people are observing in the transient population is from having a “rough life” as well.

“They survive in an entirely different dimension than you and I are used to. I mean for them, life is a real struggle, but they've adapted to survive and much of those survival skills do not involve being nice or respect for other people's property or that sort of thing,” he said.

“Many of my patients were addicted from an early age. They were often 12,14, 16 years of age when they became addicted. They were on the street from that age because it was safer for them to be on the street than it was at home.”