44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 20, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Portneuf—Jacques‑Cartier for his fine speech.
I would like to hear his comments and analysis about the fact that the government chose to appoint a unilingual anglophone lieutenant governor in our country's only bilingual province. New Brunswick subsequently took this matter to court, and the Liberals are going to fight it before a judge. The government says that future lieutenant governors will always be bilingual, and yet it has just appointed an anglophone to the position.
When it comes to respect, what message is being sent to the people who speak French in New Brunswick or elsewhere in Canada?
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Joliette. I have enjoyed working with him since 2015.
My colleague pointed to a glaring issue. How can we trust such an inconsistent government? In my speech, I presented what I feel are some very concrete facts to demonstrate this government's inconsistency. It makes us doubt, as Canadians, that the government will actually appoint a bilingual lieutenant governor in New Brunswick in the future.
We have the opportunity to enshrine this in law. Not everyone on the other side of the House is acting in bad faith, but I would prefer that this be written into law so that there is no potential for misinterpretation or loopholes.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. The Liberal government is preaching, not practising. Worse still, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, who is a francophone and a Quebecker, does all his communication in English. They have sunk pretty low.
I also agree with my colleague that Bill C‑13 is a step in the right direction and that it could go much further. I would like to know what improvements he would like to see to Bill C‑13 for francophones.
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Madam Speaker, I had the privilege of meeting with many organizations from Quebec and elsewhere in Canada who made their case. The list of things we will protect via amendment is long.
First up is the central agency. Canada's governmental structure and governance include three organizations that can give instructions in various departments: the Department of Finance, the Privy Council and Treasury Board. All the organizations want a central agency at Treasury Board to have the authority to make sure changes trickle down to all departments. That would be our first amendment.
Here is a second amendment. In Canada, the only entity that can enforce both official languages is the federal government. When it signs agreements with provinces and territories, it must include linguistic clauses with certain conditions while respecting jurisdiction so as to protect the French fact across the country.
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Madam Speaker, I believe it is so important that we protect and promote francophone language and culture in our country. I am proud to represent a very large Franco-Albertan riding with towns like Morinville, Legal and Rivière Qui Barre.
We had a tragedy happen last summer, where the iconic St. Jean Baptiste Church burned to the ground. It was about a year ago. This was really an icon for the Franco-Albertan community. I just want to hear the member's comments on how the government needs to do better to defend not only the French language, but also francophone culture across our country.
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Madam Speaker, yes, the francophone community is strong. We are fortunate that this is part of Canada's history, because it means that French is still spoken here in our country and we have a bilingual country. Yes, we must invest in and support our linguistic communities, especially in minority settings.
I strongly suggest that as part of our committee study, we ensure that communities all across the country have the appropriate tools.
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- May/20/22 1:42:56 p.m.
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Is the House ready for the question?
Some hon. members: Question.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes): The question is on the amendment to the amendment.
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the amendment to the amendment be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- May/20/22 1:44:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would request a recorded division, please.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, November 25, 2021, the recorded division stands deferred until Monday, May 30, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.
There being a message from Her Excellency the Governor General, I would ask members to rise.
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- May/20/22 1:46:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the supplementary estimates (A), 2022‑23.
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- May/20/22 1:46:38 p.m.
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We have a point of order from the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- May/20/22 1:46:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties—
Some hon. members: No.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Do you know what it is?
There have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following: That in relation to its study of the situation at the Russia/Ukraine border and implications for peace and security, seven members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development be authorized to travel to Riga, Latvia; Tallinn, Estonia; Vilnius, Lithuania and Warsaw, Poland in the summer of 2022 and that the necessary staff accompany the committee.
Some hon. members: No.
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- May/20/22 1:47:10 p.m.
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It is very obvious we do not have unanimous consent.
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- May/20/22 1:47:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have another one.
There have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I think you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following: That in relation to the—
Some hon. members: No.
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- May/20/22 1:47:26 p.m.
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There does not seem to be unanimous consent.
There are no back-and-forth discussions needed at this point.
The hon. parliamentary secretary has another point of order.
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- May/20/22 1:47:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will try this one. I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at two o'clock so we can start Private Members' Business.
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- May/20/22 1:48:01 p.m.
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Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to see the clock?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- May/20/22 1:48:17 p.m.
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It being two o'clock, the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today to join the debate on Bill C-216, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to enact the expungement of certain drug-related convictions act and the national strategy on substance use act.
The sponsor of this private member's bill is a fellow British Columbian, the member for Courtenay—Alberni, and I want to thank him for introducing this legislation. It is very timely because Canada has been struggling with an opioid overdose crisis. It is Canada's other pandemic.
However, there are some stark distinctions. The COVID-19 pandemic will wane. It is waning, and we are seeing it in the rear-view mirror. We have also developed a vaccine to combat COVID-19, and we are developing a community immunity, or a herd immunity, as some people call it. Harm reduction measures for COVID-19 are known, which are simple and generally effective. None of that is true for the opioid crisis.
I would like to read something from the government's own website. It states, “The opioid overdose crisis is worsening during the COVID-19 pandemic with many communities across Canada reporting record numbers of opioid-related deaths, emergency calls and hospitalizations.” The website also points out that there has been a 95% increase, which is almost double, of opioid-related deaths in the first year of the pandemic, moving up to 7,200.
This is a very large number. It is shocking. These are real people and fellow Canadian citizens. These are moms and dads, brothers and sisters. They are people who are loved by friends and family. These are people who have an opioid addiction or substance addiction and have found themselves unfortunately coming into contact with likely fentanyl-laced opioids.
I grieve for a family friend in my riding who, just a little while ago, marked the anniversary of the death of their son to an opioid overdose death. He was loved by his family. He had a lot of friends. He was a popular man. He had a great job. His employer relied on him, and his fellow workers enjoyed working with him. He died at home alone of an alleged opioid overdose. He sadly became part of Canada's statistics.
The sponsor of the private member's bill, as I pointed out, is a fellow British Columbian, so I want to look at some British Columbia statistics when it comes to illicit drug toxicity deaths. The number of these deaths in B.C. equates to about five deaths per day. Every day, five people in British Columbia die of an illicit drug toxicity poisoning. In 2022, 74% of those dying were age 30 to 59, and 77% were male. More than half those deaths occurred at home when the person was alone.
There was a big increase in illicit toxicity deaths since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, although we were seeing a large increase in 2015 when illicit drug toxicity deaths became the number one cause of unnatural deaths in British Columbia. That is going back to 2015. There was already a big uptick. At that time, fentanyl use spiked to become the number one cause of illicit drug toxicity deaths.
We agree that this bill is very timely, and it is a very important discussion. Let us have a closer look at the draft legislation. It will amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to repeal provisions that make it an offence to possess certain substances. It will also enact a new act for the expungement of certain drug-related convictions, as though the conviction never happened. It will also enact the national strategy on substance use act, which would require the Minister of Health to develop a harm reduction strategy.
I want to focus on that last part, the national strategy on substance use. The focus of that, according to the draft legislation, is harm caused by criminalization of substance abuse and not on the substance abuse itself. It would also introduce a low-barrier access to safe supply of addictive and harmful substances, focus on supervised consumption sites and overdose prevention, and focus on reducing stigma associated with substance abuse.
I believe the intent or hope of this legislation is that it would lead to fewer victims of substance abuse. That is a laudable goal, but I am not sure that these are the correct tools. It is my and the Conservative Party's position that we should always focus on recovery and treatment.
If we go back to the proposed national strategy on substance use, it is commendable for promoting universal access to recovery. I would support that. It would focus on relapse prevention programs, which is very supportable, and it would focus on evidence-based prevention programs. Of course, these are all important things, and I would support those initiatives.
In the 2021 federal election, the Conservatives presented a plan that included creating 1,000 drug treatment beds, creating 50 recovery community centres, supporting local and culturally appropriate addiction treatment and partnering with provinces for access to Naloxone. As such, we find some common ground.
However, we think that people should be given the hope of recovery, not just reduced harm, not just safe supply, not just safe injection sites, but real, long-lasting solutions full of hope for a better life. We believe Canada ought to focus on recovery and treatment as our basic framework for dealing with the opioid crisis.
As for the decriminalization of possession, which is part of this private member's bill, I would note that in 2020 the Public Prosecution Service of Canada issued a directive to avoid prosecuting cases of simple possession. That reflects and mirrors what is happening in some European countries, where possession still remains criminal, but police and prosecutors are given instructions not to intervene based on discretionary use of their powers and guidelines. This, I think, gives the criminal justice system the flexibility to treat addiction as a health issue, when and where appropriate, in cases where that is appropriate, but it also retains tools for law enforcement to keep harmful drugs off our streets.
I am on the public safety and national security committee, and we have just come off a study on gun control and illegal arms trafficking, focusing on the increase of gun crimes committed by members of street gangs. In that study, we heard evidence from a number of witnesses that showed us an inextricable link between drug trafficking and arms trafficking. The two go hand in hand.
I have a couple of quotes here from witnesses. The first is from Mitch Bourbonniere, who works in Winnipeg. He said, “Anyone in Winnipeg can purchase a firearm illegally, much the same way as you [can purchase] illegal drugs.”
Here is another quote, from Michael Rowe of the Vancouver police force. In an answer to a question correlating arms smuggling and drug smuggling, he said, “certainly...there's a correlation there that I don't think can be disputed, especially as the manufacturing or sale of fentanyl produces an extremely lucrative drug market. That lucrative drug market typically invites conflict that will then result in gang violence.” There is no doubt that there is a link between drug trafficking and arms trafficking.
I do not believe that removing the personal use of these drugs from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act would solve that problem. Our focus should remain on tackling the source of lethal fentanyl-laced opioids and on those criminals who produce the fentanyl and earn big profits.
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Madam Speaker, today I am speaking to Bill C‑216. To summarize it in its broadest terms, this bill deals primarily with the decriminalization of simple possession of drugs and is based on three components.
First, the bill sets out the legislative amendments that are relevant to achieving its objective of decriminalization. These include amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code, and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. In essence, the intent is to repeal subsection 4(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as well as those parts of that act, the Criminal Code and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act that refer to this particular subsection. Subsection 4(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act states, “Except as authorized under the regulations, no person shall possess a substance included in Schedule I, II or III.”
The second part of the bill enacts a new law, the expungement of certain drug-related convictions act. It is a piece of legislation that is meant to be retroactive, in a way, since it seeks to establish a procedure for the Parole Board of Canada to follow to expunge convictions that occurred prior to the coming into force of this bill, if it passes. This part of the bill would wipe the slate clean on past offences. Expunging a conviction means that the convicted person is deemed never to have been charged and convicted of that offence, thus allowing a criminal record to be wiped clean. However, expungement would not happen automatically. The individual would have to apply for expungement, the board would have to review the application to see if it is valid, and then a notice would have to be sent to the RCMP and related departments and agencies to have their records relating to the conviction expunged.
The third and final part of the bill also creates new legislation: the national strategy on substance use act. This new legislation would force the Department of Health to develop a strategy by consulting the community, and it would require the department to report on the results of the implementation of this strategy. Although one of the goals of the strategy is to reduce the criminalization tied to drug use, the third part of the bill proposes that the primary goal be a matter of public health, with an approach that seeks to deal with the harm caused by problematic substance use.
According to Bill C‑216, the strategy must be developed in consultation with representatives of the provincial governments responsible for health care services and key stakeholders including advocacy organizations, frontline health care providers, individuals with lived experience of substance use, harm reduction workers and experts in problematic substance use and substance use disorder.
Although the Bloc is generally open to the idea of diverting people struggling with substance abuse away from the courts, we believe that Bill C-216 unfortunately misses the mark with respect to its main objective. Over the past few years, there has been a tendency to consider drug-related problems as public health issues rather than crime issues for several reasons.
We cannot ignore the serious opioid crisis that has taken hold in North America since 2016. It is a serious problem that demands a government response. There was Nixon's tough on drugs approach, which strictly addressed the criminal aspect but never achieved the desired results. There is the positive experience of countries such as Portugal and Switzerland, which adopted a public health approach to issues arising from drug use. We also have a better understanding of problems related to addiction thanks to advances in scientific knowledge in this area.
The problem with Bill C-216 in general is that it puts the cart before the horse. The third part of the bill, which deals with a strategy on substance use is likely one of the most important aspects of the bill in that what we really want to do is help people with addictions overcome them. Basically, the main point of the bill is to save lives, given that opioid use has been on the rise since the 1980s. The number of opioid deaths has risen dramatically since 2016. They went from close to 3,000 in 2016 to over 6,000 just four years later in 2020.
The problem with this new bill is the timeline, the order in which the steps are to be taken. When the bill comes into force, the clauses pertaining to the offence of simple possession would take effect immediately, but the national strategy would only be implemented the following year, at the earliest.
While there may be some immediate benefits for some people if this bill is adopted, for example, first-time offenders, the bill would have no short-term impact on people with chronic addiction problems. Most importantly, we have no idea what the national policy will look like or how it will work with the governments of Quebec and the provinces, which are responsible for health care services.
In fact, our fear is that we will fall short of our objective if we only decriminalize simple drug possession for personal use without first making sure that we have health services in order, such as support, treatment and detox measures, especially when there is a rather blatant risk of interference in Quebec's and the provinces' jurisdictions.
In a way, members seem too eager to want to build on Portugal's success to justify Bill C‑216, while failing to consider what Portugal has done as a whole. While Portugal's success is widely cited as evidence that decriminalization works, the reality is much more complex.
In Portugal, an individual is generally not sent to prison if the total amount of possession does not exceed personal consumption. The individual could still face criminal sanctions, although such cases are rare. It is important to note that decriminalization is not the only measure contributing to Portugal's success. There are also diversion measures and accompanying services on the ground, such as supervised injection sites, education and reintegration resources.
It is important to understand that Portugal's policy is based on legal alternatives to simple possession of drugs for personal use. When an individual is arrested for simple possession, they are brought to the police station to determine whether the amount of drugs in their possession is below the permitted limits. Their case is then referred to a Commission for Dissuasion of Drug Addiction to assess the risks associated with their drug use. That commission then brings the individual before an expert panel of social workers, health professionals and legal advisors to assess the risks associated with the individual's behaviour. Depending on the risk, the individual is then offered a range of measures, including everything from simple education to drug treatment, fines and community service. In the most serious cases, such as repeat offenders or if other people are put at risk, individuals may be forced into treatment, and if they refuse, they could face criminal sanctions. The main objective is to encourage compliance with treatment or complete abstinence from drug use.
If Bill C-216 is passed, there is a concern that even if individuals who use drugs are not criminally charged, they will still run the risk of falling through the cracks because there will be no follow-up or systematic monitoring. That is why I spoke about putting the cart before the horse earlier.
In this context, I believe it would be more prudent to consider a more comprehensive, more holistic approach, somewhat similar to what Quebec is currently doing with the PTTCQ in particular, the Court of Quebec's addiction treatment program. The objective of this program is to help the justice system prevent crimes associated with drug addiction through measures that focus on providing treatment to offenders with drug addictions, rather than systematically treating them as criminals.
Based on what is already permitted under subsection 720(2) of the Criminal Code, the PTTCQ authorizes the court to delay sentencing so that an offender can get clean through court-supervised treatment.
The program also facilitates close collaboration between the court and addiction resources to develop a treatment plan that includes therapeutic, rehabilitation and reintegration components.
I therefore think that, while Bill C‑216 has a laudable objective, it is likely doomed to fail unless we create a framework to support drug addicts before we move forward with decriminalizing simple possession. Without such a framework, there is a risk that people who do not get support will wind up being criminalized regardless, for crimes indirectly connected to their drug problem, such as theft, if they do not have access to programs like PTTCQ, which is not available everywhere. It goes without saying that we cannot successfully decriminalize simple possession without also ensuring that health care resources are available.
In conclusion, I remind members that this is yet another example of how an unconditional increase in health transfers would have a significant impact on the lives of many.
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