44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 18, 2023 10:00AM
- May/18/23 12:06:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his strong advocacy.
In April of this year, the BC Coroners Service affirmed that there continues to be no evidence that prescribed safe supply is contributing to illicit drug deaths. In fact, B.C.'s chief coroner said, “safer supply...is absolutely not driving this crisis.”
I am disappointed with the misinformation and misconceptions the Conservatives are promoting. We know the street drug supply is toxic and poisoned. Recovery is possible, but it looks different for everyone.
Could my colleague speak to how people need to be alive to benefit from treatment?
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- May/18/23 12:07:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the choice is this: If they can get access to a safer supply, then there is interaction, which means an opportunity to work with individuals; if they do not have that option, they are going to the street. That means they are getting their drugs from an unregulated supply from organized crime.
The motion today would take away safe supply and tell people to go to the street. The police have said that they cannot arrest their way out of this problem; this problem is not going away. We have to listen to the experts. The chief coroner in B.C. is going to be reporting today. She is saying that we need a safe supply program to be rolled out, not this incremental approach, by the way.
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- May/18/23 12:30:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in his speech, the member said that Conservatives want to meet people where they are at. However, repeatedly we have said that people need options. Safe supply, treatment and abstinence programs offer different approaches and services, and they give people in those situations choices. In order to save lives, it is about the choice they need. Supporters of safe supply do not think that safe supply is a panacea, by any means, to solve all addiction problems, but in this place of privilege in which we sit it is our obligation to provide choices.
How can the member possibly say that he and his party are working to meet people where they are at, when they do not provide all the choices that we know consistently, with facts and statistics, do just that?
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- May/18/23 1:29:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what we are talking about today is safe supply. As I spoke about in my intervention, in British Columbia we have been seeing what is playing out on our streets between safe supply and decriminalization.
Mayors from all over the province have come forward to put together bylaws in order to attempt to make their cities more safe. People are afraid to take their kids to parks and playgrounds. That is what is actually playing out on the streets.
As I was mentioning, we are seeing people taking that safe supply and selling it out on the streets. It is creating this whole black market where people are taking that money and buying more dangerous drugs, like fentanyl. It is perpetuating a more difficult situation, and the numbers are increasing. The facts are what they are.
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- May/18/23 1:32:42 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, from my understanding, medical practitioners, the Canadian Chiefs of Police and other experts support safe supply.
Could the member tell the House who the Conservatives are hearing from who do not support safe supply, which we know is a vitally important life-saving service for Canadians?
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- May/18/23 1:33:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have people reaching out to me all the time, people who have boots on the ground and are seeing the results of this. They reviving people who are taking safe supply over and over again.
There is a lot written about this. I know people can be selective in what they are reading. I mentioned one of the articles about safe supply in my intervention. There are many articles about this. My time is up, but I have—
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- May/18/23 2:00:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my friend and medical colleague from across the aisle and I can agree on the need for a comprehensive approach, which I spoke to in my speech. Harm reduction, including safe supply, is one of the pillars of that approach. We need to support and scale up safe supply to use it when it is indicated. That is part of the overall approach.
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- May/18/23 4:25:46 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, there has been information collected that shows that, because of safe supply programs, there has been a significant decrease in hospitalizations for infectious complications among safe supply clients. Hospitalizations dropped from 26 in the year before the program to 13 in that year. I wonder how the member interprets such helpful data, which shows that these safe supply programs do work.
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- May/18/23 4:26:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have spent a fair amount of time in this space. I was the president of Little House, which is a recovery house in British Columbia, so I have some knowledge on the issue. A continuum of care, of course, has to be part of recovery, support and treatment. However, unlimited safe supply, where people receiving that safe supply are then selling it to kids cheaper and cheaper in order to then use that money for their own harder drugs, is a tragedy. People who run recovery houses like Last Door Recovery Society in New Westminster are on record saying that 100% of the people they deal with who have received safe supply drugs have never used all of the drugs they have received. They are selling them.
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- May/18/23 4:43:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague spoke about the intention of the program. I do not deny that there are good intentions on all sides of the House when it comes to this issue. I am just interested in looking at the results.
The reason I see the Purdue program of overpromotion and of trying to minimize stigma about the substance to get more people to use it as very similar to, and in a substantive sense the same as, the safe supply program is that it was about flooding more supply of dangerous substances into the market, making them easier to access. At that time, and still today, that increase in supply is supposed to only go to certain people in certain kinds of situations. However, what we have seen is that when there is a big increase in the supply of dangerous drugs in the market, they do not only land in the hands of those who are supposed to get them. They land in the hands of children who have not used them before, and this increases the risks to everybody.
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- May/18/23 5:16:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Brampton Centre for his quite measured speech on what is an unmeasured or moderate resolution from the Conservatives.
I wonder if he agrees with me on something. The Conservatives seem to be conflating safe supply with new addictions and it is certainly not the case. Safe supply is a way of keeping those who are already suffering from addictions, suffering from substance use problems, alive until we can get them into treatment and we can get them out of the situations that have led to their dire circumstances.
Does he agree with me that safe supply is certainly essential to preventing loss of life in our communities?
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- May/18/23 5:27:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives spoke a lot today about how they want to scrap the safer supply initiatives that have been put in place. Unfortunately, there are situations where those drugs are being resold so that the user can buy fentanyl.
If we want to be able to implement support measures to help people recover from addictions, then we need to make sure that they stay alive first. What we want is to put in place a safe supply system where we could be sure that the person who receives the substitution drug is the one who uses it.
In that case, would my colleague agree that we should continue with the safe supply initiatives so that people can have access to hard drugs that are pharmaceutically produced and do not contain fentanyl?
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