44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 2, 2022 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to speak in support of this bill presented by my colleague, the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni.
I thank the member for his dedication and leadership on this issue. While we have recently met, I know he has long been an advocate for individuals struggling with mental health and addictions. I would very much like to take a moment to thank him.
These are issues very important to me as well. In our own way, each of us has worked for a number of years, raising awareness and striving to address the toxic drug crisis, he in the chamber and me in my former role as chief medical officer of health for Yukon. I was serving as Yukon's CMOH back in 2016 when the first fentanyl fatality occurred in the territory. Since then, Canada has lost more than 26,000 people to overdoses. Untold numbers of Canadians have had their lives dramatically changed forever due to the untimely and preventable loss of loved ones.
My territory of the Yukon currently has the highest per capita mortality rate for toxic drug overdoses among the provinces and territories. I cannot overstate how this has affected every single member of my riding, but we know this is a problem that belongs to all of Canada.
As CMOH of Yukon, I worked with the Yukon government, first nations and community partners to introduce improvements in prevention, clinical care, access to treatment, education and harm reduction. I am pleased that the Liberal government, of which I am a proud member, has stepped up to address this toxic drug crisis. I know that without the multiple arrays of federal supports, we would not have had the successes in Yukon that we have had to date.
The hon. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions has already demonstrated strong leadership in this new ministry. The government already recognizes that problematic substance use is, first and foremost, a public health issue. We are working to divert people who use drugs away from the criminal justice system and toward supportive and trusted relationships.
We have a multi-faceted approach building on previous action, including investments of over $700 million in community-led harm reduction, treatment and prevention projects, which are so important. Importantly, we have also received section 56 exemption requests from B.C., Vancouver and Toronto Public Health, and they are being reviewed on an urgent basis. The government has invested over $60 million to expand access to a safe supply of prescription opioids and increase access to life-saving naloxone across the county, including in remote and isolated indigenous communities.
Since 2017, supervised consumption sites in Canada have received more than 2.9 million visits and have reversed almost 27,000 overdoses without a single death at a site. We are investing $425 million annually for community-based services to address the mental wellness needs of first nations and Inuit peoples. Our government is clear that we will use every tool at our disposal to end this national public health crisis.
Whether in Yukon or in any other location in Canada, though, there is more we can do. There is more that we should do.
Part of this is expanding and building on what we are already achieving across the country. Currently, there are effective practices in place that can be scaled up and shared.
In addition, it is time that we formally consider decriminalization as a national policy. Decriminalization, simply put, means that we would no longer be considering simple possession of narcotic drugs and other controlled substances to be a criminal act. Rather, such possession speaks to a health issue that must be treated as a health issue.
It is important to say what this is not. Those who commit serious offences, including trafficking, will continue to receive serious sentences.
This bill would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to repeal a provision that makes it an offence to possess certain substances and make consequential amendments to other acts. In addition, it would enact the expungement of certain drug-related convictions act, which establishes a procedure for expunging certain drug-related convictions and provides for the destruction or removal of the judicial records of those convictions that are in federal repositories and systems. Finally, it would enact the national strategy on substance use act, which would require the Minister of Health to develop a national strategy to address the harm caused by problematic substance use.
The hon. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions was correct when she said that decriminalization on its own, with a toxic drug supply, will not save the lives that we need to. The key words here are “on its own”. The important step of decriminalization must be in step with all the other components, building on the work done over the previous years by all levels of government on safe supply, on education and reducing stigmatization, on access to treatment and on better clinical management.
We need to provide better training for frontline workers responding to these crises and perhaps need to consider education and training for other community members, particularly for isolated communities. Safe supply, supervised consumption, better access to treatment, effective prevention and decriminalization are all approaches that, combined, can help prevent more deaths.
As we know, B.C., Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto are all calling for the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The country’s largest mental health teaching hospital, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, is also pressing for it, and we know it is a position shared by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. It is also the position of the Canadian Medical Association and, in my riding, the Yukon Medical Association.
In addition to all that the government has done to address this crisis in recent years, we need an approach that will consider a broader approach to the issue, including decriminalization. These are critical discussions we must have, which is why I am happy to speak to my colleague’s bill, support it and help it get to committee. It is the direction we need to move in, and I look forward to working on it with members of the House.
To move forward, we need to speak passionately, show compassion and make sure we are doing all we can to get the evidence across as clearly as possible. Our decisions in this House should always put doing what is right for Canadians first by following the evidence and facts, medical or otherwise. People are dying. We must act.
This bill must be carefully and critically considered, and I am very pleased that my colleague brought this forward. I very much look forward to working with the hon. member opposite on this critical issue, as well as any other measures to address this opioid crisis.
1156 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am deeply honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-216, the health-based approach to the substance use act.
I would like to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, for introducing this legislation and for his tireless efforts to advance compassionate and evidenced-based drug policy in this country.
In the shadow of COVID-19, the overdose epidemic has rapidly worsened across Canada, and it is hard to believe that could have happened. In British Columbia, 2,224 died from overdoses in 2021 alone. This represents the deadliest year on record in Canadian history, and a 26% increase from 2020. December 2021 was also the deadliest month on record in British Columbia, with 215 people losing their lives that month alone from an opioid-poisoned drug death. That is the equivalent of about seven deaths per day. Across Canada, over 25,000 Canadians have lost their lives to the overdose epidemic in the last six years alone.
Although COVID-19 has fuelled this crisis, it did not create it. Decades of criminalization; a toxic, poisoned, illicit supply; and a lack of timely access to harm reduction, treatment and recovery services have caused this ongoing catastrophe.
The Liberal government claims that its response to COVID-19 has been evidenced-based and informed by science and the advice of public health experts. It is time to apply that approach to Canada's other epidemic. It is time to treat substance use addictions as the health issues they truly are. The legislation before the House today would do exactly that.
The health-based approach to the substance use act would comprehensively address Canada's overdose epidemic as follows: It would decriminalize personal drug possession; it would provide for record expungement; it would ensure a low-barrier access to a regulated, safe supply; and it would expand access to harm reduction, treatment and recovery services across Canada while also focusing on prevention and education.
Decriminalization is one of those issues on which I believe voters are far ahead of politicians. It is a policy area where public opinion more accurately reflects the empirical data than our laws do. That is because not a single community across Canada is untouched by addiction. Everyone has a mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, cousin, grandparent, partner, friend, neighbour, coworker, child who has struggled with problematic substance use or substance use disorder, or maybe it is even they themself. Indeed, Canadians understand intuitively something that is critically important to acknowledge in the House tonight: Those who are suffering are not criminals. Rather, they are vulnerable people experiencing tremendous pain.
In his years working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Dr. Gabor Maté, whom I consider to be an expert of global stature and a great Canadian, has found that childhood trauma and emotional pain lie at the root of addiction. Dr. Maté said, “This is not a war on drugs. This is a war on drug addicts.”
Addiction can never be understood if looked at through the lens of moralism and judgment. It is time, as a society, that we ask not why the addiction but instead why the pain. Indeed, if we accept that pain and trauma are at the root of addiction, then criminalization can only be seen as cruel and counterproductive, because it compounds the very problem it seeks to correct. Stigma, shame and abuse are the core emotional issues for those suffering from substance disorder, and criminalizing their behaviour exacerbates and deepens that shame and stigma. This is obvious.
Criminal sanctions are society's way of imposing maximum trauma on individuals. They get harassed by the police; they go through the indignity of arrest; they go into the very serious, intimidating context of a court; they go through a trial; they go to jail. This system is designed to impose the most serious pressure society can possibly impose. In other words, when we criminalize substance use, we retraumatize people who are already struggling to cope with trauma.
Moreover, decades of evidence have demonstrated that criminalization serves to keep people who use drugs away from prevention and early treatment health services due to fear of being arrested, labelled or outed. Criminalization also pushes people who use drugs to rely on an illicit and obviously toxic drug supply.
If criminalizing drug use worked, we would have eliminated it years ago, but instead we have spent billions of dollars, harmed millions of people, torn families and communities apart, ruined individuals' lives and achieved nothing. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. If that is the case, decades of lawmakers in the House have been and are insane.
Part 1 of this legislation would end Canada's war on drugs once and for all by striking the prohibition against personal possession from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It would end the insanity of the war on drugs.
Furthermore, criminal records amplify the harms of criminalization by exposing people who use drugs to ongoing discrimination and create barriers to housing, gainful employment, travel and community involvement. This in turn leads to further stigmatization and marginalization.
The disproportionate impact of criminal records on racialized and indigenous communities has also been well documented. That is why part 2 of this legislation is so essential to a health-based approach to drug use. It would ensure that criminal records from previous offences related to personal possession would be fully expunged, so that someone does not carry stigmatization for the rest of their lives. Unlike the current Liberal government's failed policy on cannabis pardons, the process outlined in this bill would provide for an automatic, cost-free and complete deletion of records.
Finally, part 3 of this legislation would require the development and implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to address the harm caused by problematic substance use. It would get at the real cause of the deaths. This strategy would be developed in collaboration with key stakeholders, including advocacy organizations, frontline health care providers; and, importantly, individuals with lived experience. It would address the root causes of problematic substance use; ensure access to a safe, regulated supply; provide universal access to recovery, treatment and harm reduction services; and reduce the stigma associated with substance use. There is an urgent need for low-barrier access to a safe supply of pharmaceutical-grade alternatives to illegal street drugs of all types for everyone now. Given that the main driver of the overdose crisis is the fact that the illicit, poisoned drug supply is toxic and unpredictable, experts have been clear that the death toll cannot be abated without this evidence-based measure.
Although limited access to safe supply has been provided in some jurisdictions, existing programs do not come anywhere even close to meeting demand across the country. To emphasize, it is the toxic, poisoned street supply of drugs run by criminalized manufacturers with no regulation that is killing Canadians by the thousands. Any law that does not address this reality is not health-based; it is contributing to fatalities.
Some in the current government say they believe in treating addiction as a health issue and not a criminal one. I have heard three consecutive Liberal health ministers and a Liberal Prime Minister say this many times, but they refuse to act on this claim. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the law that criminalizes drug use and addiction, and it is a federal law.
I am calling out every member of the House, especially Liberals, on that contradiction tonight, because this is a contradiction that kills. They cannot say they treat drug use and addiction as a health issue and leave it criminalized on the federal books to continue to kill people.
I hope all parliamentarians stop the insanity. Let us start treating drug use and addiction as the health issue that it really is.
1332 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
