44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2024 10:00AM
- May/9/24 2:01:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, dobryi den. Every third Thursday in May is Vyshyvanka Day. Today, we stand in solidarity with Ukraine and our Ukrainian Canadian community by proudly wearing vyshyvankas and Ukrainian ribbons in the chamber.
Ukrainians have proudly worn vyshyvankas for centuries, carefully crafted with colourful embroidery and time-honoured motifs, reflecting the unique heritage of each region of Ukraine. In the face of over 800 days of genocidal Russian aggression, this year's Vyshyvanka Day holds profound significance. Originating as a grassroots movement by students in Chernivtsi, this has evolved into a global holiday celebrating Ukrainian culture and heritage.
As this celebration has evolved and grown, so too has the support for Ukraine. Like every stitch is important in a vyshyvanka, every contribution, no matter how small, makes a difference in war. Here in Canada, we must provide Ukraine with the munitions we can and have produced, and send the CRV7 rockets now, which Ukraine requested over six months ago.
On behalf of Canada's Conservatives, I reaffirm our unwavering commitment to stand with Ukraine until its victory. Happy Vyshyvanka Day. Slava Ukraini.
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- May/9/24 3:27:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague and friend, the member for Bay of Quinte.
After nine years, the Prime Minister and his NDP coalition are not worth the drugs, disorder, death and destruction. There is crime and chaos on the streets, and dangerous, extreme drug policies pushed forward by the NDP-Liberal government have made things so much worse.
Since the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister took office, opiate overdoses across Canada have increased by 166%. In British Columbia, drug deaths were up 380% between 2015 and 2023, from 529 to 2,546. Those are people: loved ones, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins, friends, family and neighbours. Every single life lost is tragic. However, it is important to note that the 380% increase since the Prime Minister started implementing his dangerous and extreme drug policies in B.C. absolutely must be called out.
In British Columbia, more people are dying as taxpayer-funded drugs flood the streets. We see playgrounds littered with crack pipes, dirty needles and drug paraphernalia that abound. All the while, the Liberals have handcuffed law enforcement, making it nearly impossible for the police to just do their job and keep communities safe. We have clearly heard that the Liberals' failed legalization in British Columbia removed tools from police officers, making our streets more dangerous.
Nurses have to deal with plumes of smoke from meth in the hospitals they work in. In fact, one nurse was forced to make a tough choice to end breastfeeding her twins earlier than she wanted to, as a direct result of being exposed to dangerous and deadly drugs in the workplace and her concern about this potentially harming her precious little babies.
In the year after the Prime Minister made it legal to possess crack, heroin, meth, fentanyl and other hard drugs, a record 2,500 British Columbians lost their lives to overdose. Last year, the former Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Carolyn Bennett, assured Canadians that the Liberals would end their experiment if public health and public safety indicators were not met. Fifteen months in, it is clear that we are failing at both, and B.C.'s NDP premier had to plead with the federal government to grant its request and rescue them from the failed policy. It took 11 days before the NDP-Liberal government acted on the pleading request from the B.C. NDP, effectively gutting its extreme policy and admitting that it was a failure.
Now, common-sense Conservatives are calling on the Prime Minister to listen to our common-sense letter and fully reject Toronto's request to legalize hard drugs, and to prevent another tragedy like we have so clearly seen in British Columbia. The Prime Minister must show leadership, completely reject the failed policy and state clearly on the record that he will not allow the dangerous policy to legalize hard drugs in any community across the country. He absolutely needs to not export the failed policy to communities such as Montreal, Toronto or others.
It is so concerning, as many communities across the country have passed resolutions calling for legalization. It is worth noting that this happened after the extremist NDP-Liberal government funded an organization called Moms Stop the Harm, which then quickly launched a national campaign lobbying municipalities and indigenous communities to call on the federal government to develop a plan that includes “legal regulation of illicit drugs to ensure safe supply of pharmaceutical alternatives to toxic street drugs, and decriminalization for personal use.”
Effectively, the federal government funded an advocacy organization to do its dirty work for it, giving it cover to further the dangerous policy. To make matters worse, we have heard many leading addiction physicians, right across the country, state that the Liberal-NDP so-called safe supply continues to fuel new addictions. Courageous physicians from across the country have come forward and demanded an immediate end to programs that were flooding the street with taxpayer-funded high-potency narcotics.
However, what confuses me is that when we start looking into the so-called safe supply and we get to the bottom of it, it is clear that someone must be making money from it. Where is all the money coming from? Where are the activists getting the money to push forward with this? It turns out that there probably is a lot of money being made.
I am going to describe a few people. The first is Dr. Perry Kendall. He was British Columbia's public health officer from 1999 to 2018. In 2017, while still in his role as the public health officer, Dr. Kendall appears to have leveraged his influence to shape Health Canada's regulations to approve diacetylmorphine, that is, heroin, for treatment of opiate use disorder. In 2020, after retiring as public health officer, Dr. Kendall then co-founded a company called Fair Price Pharma to provide diacetylmorphine, that is, heroin, to those at risk of overdose.
In 2021, Fair Price Pharma then imported 15 kilograms of diacetylmorphine that it bought from a licensed European supplier. Fair Price Pharma then contracted a federally licensed dealer's permit to import the heroin. From the time that Dr. Kendall was in office, Fair Price Pharma got upset because there were not enough people using the drug. A headline from one article reads, “BC's first provincial health officer fighting for safe supply of heroin”.
Then there is Dr. Martin Schechter. Dr. Schechter played a leading role in two Canadian studies that were completed in Vancouver, the NAOMI and SALOME studies, which were the basis for the arguments made to bring forward the so-called safe supply. Ironically, Dr. Schechter is the other co-founder of none other than Fair Price Pharma.
To recap, Martin Schechter and Dr. Kendall co-founded a company that led to profit from so-called safe supply. Dr. Tyndall is also involved. He is a former executive medical director of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and former deputy provincial health minister under Dr. Kendall. Dr. Tyndall then started MySafe Society, which provides so-called safe supply hydromorphone from vending machines.
In July 2023, MySafe received $1.3 million in Health Canada's SUAP funding, in addition to $3.5 million it had previously received. At this point, another article came out in British Columbia, with the headline, “BC doctors upset their ‘safe supply’ of heroin going unprescribed during overdose crisis”. It is exceptionally troubling that there are doctors pushing for safe supply and then potentially profiting from it after having created companies to solve the problem.
It is important to share that Conservatives will listen to the experts and shut down the government-supplied drug programs. We will bring hope and a common-sense plan for treatment and recovery. Conservatives believe recovery is possible and that it should be the goal. We believe that every Canadian with an addiction deserves the opportunity to pursue recovery. If the Prime Minister allows Toronto, Montreal or any other community to legalize hard drugs as he did in British Columbia, the only outcome will be leading more vulnerable Canadians to a life of misery and despair.
We need to restore hope to all Canadians. Common-sense Conservatives will stop funding the dangerous taxpayer-funded, so-called safe supply drugs. We will ban hard drugs. We will invest in detox, treatment and recovery services. We will bring our loved ones home drug-free.
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- May/9/24 3:38:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting that more people have died of overdose in British Columbia in the first three months of 2024 than in all of 2015. More than six people die in British Columbia every day due to an overdose. It is absolutely incumbent on each and every one of us legislators to adopt a recovery-oriented system of care, providing hope for people who are struggling with addiction, and offer them off-ramps so they can pursue recovery.
British Columbia did not just tweak the program; it effectively gutted it, admitting it was an abject failure and demanding the federal government rescue the province from this failure. Unfortunately, I am not going to take any lessons from the Government of B.C. on how to handle the addiction crisis.
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- May/9/24 3:40:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the tragic overdose crisis that is gripping our country, and the addiction crisis, are very serious issues. There are some very stark differences with the approaches on how to handle this serious, tragic issue.
Conservatives believe that people have the capacity to recover from addiction. We believe we need to support people in pursuing recovery through detox, treatment and a recovery-oriented system of care. It is very obvious that the NDP-Liberal coalition does not believe in supporting people in those endeavours. Unfortunately, people's lives are lost as a direct result.
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- May/9/24 3:42:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think my colleague pointed out something that is really inconvenient for the Bloc Québécois, a party that seems to support the legalization of hard drugs in Canada.
The Conservative Party is very clear. We do not support the legalization of hard drugs, such as crack, heroin and morphine. We will continue to be clear about that.
I hope the Bloc Québécois will support our motion.
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- May/9/24 5:20:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, with whom I had the privilege of sitting on the health committee for a number of years. I just want to tell him that I am very sorry to hear about his dad. I have lost both of my parents, not to overdose, but I understand the profound pain that comes from losing one's parents. I also understand the profound pain that comes from having family members with addiction.
Addiction is something that is incredibly challenging for each and every one of us. A mom wrote to me, and I shared this today in the health committee. She said, “Hi. Sorry it's been so long. I've been in survival mode, fighting to save my daughter. Her 13-year-old friend just died yesterday, here in rural British Columbia, from an overdose after the local hospital released her from an overdose on Friday. Please help us here. I can't bear going to another child's funeral. These kids deserve so much more than this ignorant system. Doctors should have held her, under the Mental Health Act, until they could have gone to detox. Another family ruined, many who loved her, traumatized, and more deaths to follow if something does not change.”
Does the member agree that there should be an expansion of detox in his home province of British Columbia?
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- May/9/24 5:31:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we request a recorded division.
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