44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2024 10:00AM
- May/9/24 10:04:13 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition today on behalf of small business owners who work in the natural health supply, food or products industry.
The petitioners are calling upon the government to decrease red tape to eliminate the regulatory changes that will increase their costs in respect to labelling and licensing for products as simple as vitamin C and fluoride-free toothpaste. The petitioners want the Government of Canada out of the way. They want to have their natural health products freed from more government red tape.
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- May/9/24 10:06:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, could my hon. colleague from Alberta outline, in very clear terms, the threat that foreign governments are posing to Canadian members of Parliament who simply want to stand up for human rights and justice, as well as peace, order and good government in Canada?
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- May/9/24 11:23:15 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when I was 10 years old, I had a similar experience in Gastown, British Columbia, in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. I remember driving in with my mom for the very first time and being shocked about the chaos and despair I saw, even as a young boy. Anyone who goes to that neighbourhood in Vancouver sees that chaos. Unfortunately, now, that addictions crisis has spread right across the country and into every community in British Columbia. People are struggling. People are dying, and something needs to change. However, 15 months ago, this Liberal-NDP government launched a wacko, hard-drug legalization policy that has led to even more crime, more chaos, more drugs and more disorder, especially in British Columbia.
While the opioid addiction crisis has accelerated in severity in recent years, it is not a new problem. In 2009, Doctors of BC, formerly known as the BC Medical Association, published a policy paper entitled “Stepping Forward: Improving Addiction Care in BC ”. The paper made 10 recommendations, including “Formally recognizing addiction as a chronic, treatable disease under the BC Primary Care Charter and the BC Chronic Disease Management Program”.
The recommendations state, and this is crucial, “Create and fund 240 new flexible medically supervised detoxification spaces”, as well as “Fund the development of 600 new addiction-treatment beds across the province”.
Fifteen years later, the availability of treatment beds has not improved. In fact, it has only gotten worse. However, nowhere in that paper did it suggest that making drugs like fentanyl, heroin, crack and meth legal would help British Columbians.
Today, the leading cause of death for youth aged 10 to 18 in my province is overdose; it is drug toxicity. Let that sink in. In 2023, more than 2,500 British Columbians lost their lives to illicit drug overdoses. More than six British Columbians lose their life every day due to deadly drugs. Since 2016, there have been 42,000 people lost to the opioid crisis across Canada, and since the Prime Minister took office, opioid overdose deaths have increased 166%.
The main argument the government has made in support of this reckless legalization and decriminalization policy was that it would reduce the stigma surrounding addiction. In reality, it has only made that stigma worse. Canadians are good people. They are compassionate people, but that compassion is evaporating quickly as crime and chaos increase in conjunction with the radical policies of the government, and I will give an example.
Last October, the Abbotsford Soccer Association published an open letter to the City of Abbotsford, decrying the state of their fields and calling for change. It reads:
The state of sports facilities, especially soccer pitches, within the city, is nothing short of lamentable.
It goes on to say this:
Abbotsford Soccer Association (ASA) members are witnessing an increased incidence of individuals with substance abuse disorder loitering on the grounds of [Matsqui rec centre] which has subsequently led to the increased presence of drug apparatus scattered on the fields and surrounding walkways including syringes and needles, and shattered crack pipes and liquor bottles.
It is not acceptable for any parent or any child to face those conditions when going to play sports.
The letter goes on to outline that community parks are the most common place for children to be injured by dirty needles and that children “imitate the behaviours” that they see around them. In other words, what is happening at Matsqui rec centre is normalizing drug behaviour, and kids are being exposed to that.
The government knew from the start that its wacko policy of allowing open drug use in public would put children at risk, but it went ahead with it anyway. That is shameful, and it is a complete dereliction of its duty to protect children.
At the Legion in Mission, veterans have to clean up dirty needles and have to ask people to stop smoking crack on their property, daily. That goes for every business in the downtown Mission core. It is like the Liberal government has created a crack tax because their windows are shattered, and they have to have haz-mat materials on site to clean up because of the possibility of fentanyl.
In Mission, there was an addictions clinic operated by Dr. Larina Reyes-Smith, which provided addictions care, STI screening, counselling and more. Dr. Reyes-Smith is a strong advocate for increased access to detox treatment and treatment of mental illness rather than the so-called safe supply model being pursued by the government and the Province of B.C. In October, she came to me distressed because she was forced to close her clinic due to high costs and a lack of support from the provincial government, which did not understand her approach to wraparound care, nor the quality of care she gave to those people desperate to get off drugs and live a better life.
Physicians continue to speak out, saying that treatment funding needs to be under the same umbrella as primary care so it can be billed to provincial health coverage, but that, frustratingly, is not the case. Even in publicly funded detox centres, patients are charged a per diem out of pocket, making it extremely challenging for those struggling with addiction to access life-saving treatment.
Why is the emphasis not on bolstering the number of addictions doctors rather than on legalizing hard drugs and leaving people to die on their own? Why is the focus not on building the infrastructure we so desperately need in order to address the crisis?
The opioid crisis is not limited just to B.C. either. Last fall, the town of Belleville, Ontario, declared a state of emergency after 23 people overdosed in two days. Belleville is only a little bit bigger than Mission. In a town of just over 50,000 people, 23 people overdosed in just under 48 hours. Again, let that sink in. This is the stuff being normalized in Canada. Thirteen of the overdoses took place in just two hours.
Now the government is contemplating allowing more cities and provinces to make the same mistake British Columbia did. As a British Columbian, I am scared that the Prime Minister will expand this wacko policy and that other provincial governments will make the same mistake ours did. That is why the Conservatives today are calling for the government to do four things. The first is to proactively and clearly reject the City of Toronto's request to the federal government to make deadly hard drugs like crack cocaine, heroin and meth legal.
Secondly, the motion calls on the Prime Minister to “reject the City of Montreal's vote calling on the federal government to make deadly hard drugs legal.”
Third is to deny any active or future requests from provinces, territories and municipalities seeking federal approval to make deadly hard drugs legal in their jurisdiction. Fourth is to end taxpayer-funded narcotics and redirect the money into treatment and recovery programs for drug addiction.
Every day, 22 Canadians lose their life to this deadly crisis, and the government is only making the problem worse. Therefore I call on all members of the House to support our motion today and put an end to the wacko and deadly hard drug legalization experiment once and for all so we can focus on getting people access to the treatment, recovery and supports they desperately need.
Canadians love that our country is peaceful. They love an orderly country. That is being taken away from them because of the radical ideological approach. Let us bring our loved ones home.
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- May/9/24 11:32:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the basis of that question is completely false. Under former prime minister Stephen Harper, health care funding to the provinces increased on an incremental basis. We never reduced funding for health care. We provided for the demands of the provinces and territories at that time.
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- May/9/24 11:33:47 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I outlined in my speech, the crisis we are facing is not limited just to British Columbia. I think the real question the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith needs to consider is why her ideologically extreme premier, Mr. Eby, has done a 180 on the policy. That goes to the very point I made in my speech, which is that parents do not want drug addiction normalized in our communities. Parents want to be able to go to downtown Nanaimo, downtown Mission or downtown Abbotsford and access a recreational centre without being fearful of being exposed to a methamphetamine.
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- May/9/24 11:34:56 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wish the member for Kitchener Centre would follow my social media a little more closely. I have met with dozens of parents who have lost their kids to the overdose crisis.
In fact in the last year I met with a mother whose son had overdosed while at a treatment home because open drug use was allowed there. That mother lost her child. Afterwards, on the one-year anniversary of his death, I went to a reception hosted by the mother to feed some of the people her son used to hang out with, at the Diamond Head Motor Inn in Mission. I asked some of the people currently addicted to drugs, and those who have been addicted, whether safe supply is making a difference. They said, “The government is just laughable because we are just selling the drugs. What has happened is a joke, a complete joke.” They know it and we know it. We need to stop it.
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- May/9/24 11:37:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois member did not listen to my speech today. I said it was a problem. The 2009 report that I mentioned states that the government has to start treating drug addiction like other chronic diseases.
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- May/9/24 11:47:51 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, during my speech, I referenced Dr. Reyes-Smith and her attempt to provide the wraparound services that she felt her patients needed. I will note that she was one of the authors of the 2009 report I referenced as well. Dr. Reyes-Smith is a small business corporation, like every other doctor in the province of B.C. When doctors face their ability to operate, they have to work within a funding system that does not allow for wraparound care.
Why has the Government of Canada, with the $4.5 billion that it has not delivered on mental health yet, not tried to change that and allow for an innovative solution that allows a doctor in B.C. to provide wraparound services and treat the mental health addiction crisis more like primary care instead of a one-off visit with a patient?
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- May/9/24 1:20:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP-Liberal coalition has been speaking a lot about the four pillars today, but its members have said nothing about enforcement. We have asked numerous times how many arrests have been made to stop the illegal flow of fentanyl and how the Criminal Code has been used to stop illegal drugs from killing people. They cannot say a single thing about it. Why is that?
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- May/9/24 5:06:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member from Coquitlam failed to mention, in her speech, that what brought us here today was the 180° from the Premier of British Columbia, who realized that he was going to lose the next election because of the crime, chaos and complete anger in British Columbia over what has happened to our downtown cores and people who are, indeed, suffering from drug addiction.
Will the member agree that the B.C. New Democrats are taking this position because they are afraid of losing the election and that they did not actually follow the four principles, which include enforcement, that have been talked about today?
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- May/9/24 6:27:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Abbotsford, British Columbia, suffered devastating floods in 2021. I was informed by the Minister of Emergency Preparedness that some of the money from the disaster financial assistance program would be used to help reconstruct our community. The City of Abbotsford has also applied to a climate adaptation fund to help rebuild the waterways, Highway No. 1 and the train routes through this area.
Will the government help Abbotsford access that money as quickly as possible so our national trade corridors are not cut off again?
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