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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 312

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 312 - May/9/24
Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)
  • May/9/24 11:07:47 a.m.
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moved: That, given that since the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister took office, opioid overdose deaths across Canada have increased by 166% according to the most recent data available, the House call on the Prime Minister to: (a) proactively reject the City of Toronto's request to the federal government to make deadly hard drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin, and meth legal; (b) reject the City of Montreal's vote calling on the federal government to make deadly hard drugs legal; (c) deny any active or future requests from provinces, territories and municipalities seeking federal approval to make deadly hard drugs legal in their jurisdiction; and (d) end taxpayer funded narcotics and redirect this money into treatment and recovery programs for drug addiction. He said: Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon. A couple of years ago, I paid a visit to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and I was both shocked and surprised. The shock is self-evident. Anyone who has been there would have seen the carnage of our fellow citizens lying face-first on the pavement in overdoses, the many more who stand on two feet with their heads between their legs, bent over in a spine-twisting posture that is common among those who are maxed out on fentanyl. These are spine-twisting postures that leave them bent forward, often for the rest of their lives. Those lives are often shortened, as the game of Russian roulette of using fentanyl risks ending their breathing every time they do it. There is an unmistakable smell of too many people and too few bathrooms, with tents that go block after block after block. The police pointed to one tent, identifying it as the headquarters of the “United Nations”, a self-described gang that supplies the guns and other deadly weapons for the street. There are people screaming at the top of their lungs, having lost control of themselves while in a static state of near overdose. These things are all stunning to witness, even though one might have expected, knowing the stats, that they were all there. We know that the Downtown Eastside was an experiment brought in by NDP municipal and provincial governments, but it was an experiment that the Prime Minister saw and said needed to be expanded right across the country. He has succeeded as, now, these tent encampments are regular in every part of the country. In your home province, Mr. Speaker, Halifax has 35 homeless encampments. That is 35 encampments in quaint, beautiful, peaceful Halifax. Every Canadian knows of such an encampment in their community, even though nine years ago it was unthinkable. The unmistakable link between this policy and the results that I just described play out now in the rare but courageous journalism that has begun, finally, to expose the cause. I point to an article in the National Post that reads, “Miller says that her daughter Madison told her that they 'could go up to a drug addict and ask for dillies and they’d have bottles of them, because they would go into pharmacies, get them filled up and sell them to the kids.'” “Dillies” is slang for the hydromorphone that is funded by government. A National Post article from March 11 reads: “I had several patients who were drug-free for a long time and just couldn't resist the temptation of this very cheap hydromorphone that was now on the street,” said Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addiction physician. “Every addiction medicine doctor I have spoken to has told me that, on a daily basis in their offices, they're dealing with diverted hydromorphone, either from new clients coming in who are addicted to it, or patients of theirs that are using it as a drug of abuse.” Global News provided rare, courageous journalism on this as well, showing that the price for a hydromorphone pill on the streets of Vancouver has dropped from $10 to 25¢ since the government began subsidizing and spreading the drug far and wide. There are reports of dealers standing outside of pharmacies waiting for those who have the prescription to get the so-called safe supply to immediately deliver it to the dealers who can then sell it to finance other terrible drugs. Then, of course, we have the overdoses that result as people graduate from those drugs. The Prime Minister has all of this evidence. He has the evidence that, since he took office, overdose deaths are up 166% nationwide. They are up the most in the places where his and the NDP's radical policies have been most enthusiastically embraced. That is in British Columbia, where it has grown by 380%. Only with an election on the horizon did the B.C. government admit its failing and try to reverse the policy, just in time to go to the polls. However, still, Toronto and Montreal are applying for the same decriminalization of hard, illicit, unregulated drugs that caused such carnage in British Columbia, a request that the Prime Minister steadfastly refuses to rule out. I said that I was shocked and surprised. What surprised me when I went to the Downtown Eastside were the people who greeted me there. They were not the addicts. They were not the police. They were a small platoon of activists who somehow learned of my arrival, even though it was unannounced and was not posted anywhere for either the media or the social networks. They were there to record and to follow me, and to heckle me, which is fine. I can deal with that. I do it every day. However, it confused me. Who is paying for all this? Where is the money coming from for the activists who are pushing this? It turns out that there is a lot of money being made. Let me read a headline. “Prof, former public health officer launch company to produce legal heroin for treatment”. Martin Schechter, who led the study, called the the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI), and Perry Kendall, B.C.'s first public health officer, are moving to change that. Frustrated by the lack of action from government, the two have launched a company called FPP...short for Fair Price Pharma, with the goal of producing an affordable domestic supply of legal, injectable heroin for use in treatment. More than 5,500 British Columbians have died from illicit drug and overdoses since 2016, including 170 in May. Dr. Schechter, who is also a professor of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, said in an e-mail that the overdose poisoning crisis [was a] failure to expand...legal heroin—a proven...cost-effective treatment—in the face of desperate need for safer supply, [that] drove the two doctors to act. [They said that he has a company] to set up a dedicated facility to manufacture the product and offer it at a cost to interested health care providers, including those in other provinces. He and Dr. Kendall are expected to meet this month with Health Canada's therapeutic products directorate, which regulates prescription drugs, to determine the tests and evidence needed to obtain a license.... They estimate they will need about $3-million to launch the product. Of course, they are making money. Later, they would complain. “B.C. doctors upset their 'safe supply' of heroin going unprescribed during overdose crisis”. They began to lobby for more money. This is from other news articles. Perry Kendall, the former Provincial Health Officer until 2018 is an advocate for safe supply. He founded Fair Price Pharma to distribute heroin. Mark Tyndall, who was B.C.'s deputy provincial health officer and was an executive medical director, is the founder of MySafe project. As I said, Martin Schechter was not with the B.C. government directly, but was responsible for the research that led to the so-called safe supply. He founded Fair Price Pharma. These are the companies that are actually making the money and are intimidating opponents of their plan. This is turning into a gigantic, self-licking ice cream cone, one that needs to end. It is in the service of money-making and not of the public. That is why common-sense Conservatives would stop funding hard narcotics, would ban hard drugs and would put the money into treatment and recovery services that would bring our loved ones home, drug-free.
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Context: House Hansard - 312 - May/9/24
Hon. Kerry-Lynne Findlay (South Surrey—White Rock, CPC)
  • May/9/24 1:21:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister, aided and abetted by the NDP, has spent nine years implementing his radical vision of Canada. He would like everyone to believe that this agenda is normal. There is record food bank usage, out-of-control gas prices and a housing market that has priced young Canadians out of the dream of home ownership. The government is censoring the Internet by controlling what people can see or say online. There is a 39% increase in violent crime; catch-and-release bail that sees offenders arrested in the morning, out by noon, and then rearrested later that very same day; and the legalization of meth, cocaine, heroin and opioids in British Columbia. Parents are worried that their children could step on used needles in a playground. None of this is normal. These are the outcomes of the radical policies brought to us by the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister. His legacy is one of crime, chaos, drugs and disorder. The results of his hard-drug legalization experiment and taxpayer-funded narcotics policy have been tragic but entirely predictable. Since 2015, over 42,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses. Opioid overdose deaths have increased 186% across Canada under the Prime Minister's watch. A record 2,500 British Columbians died from drug overdoses last year. That is up 380% in nine years. That is six entirely preventable deaths, every day, of friends and colleagues, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Each of them had a story, and every one of these deaths is a tragedy. These are human beings. Drug overdose is now the number one cause of death in B.C., with more fatalities than crime, accidents and disease combined. It is also the number one cause of death among kids aged 10 to 17. I have 11-year-old twin grandsons. This is personal, and this is not normal. The story of 14-year-old Kamilah Sword of Port Coquitlam is heartbreaking. Kamilah tragically overdosed in her bedroom in August 2022. According to her father, the coroner found three drugs in her system: MDMA, cocaine and hydromorphone. Hydromorphone is an opiate prescribed under B.C.'s so-called safe supply program. Kamilah's friends reported that they have witnessed children as young as 11 years of age using hydromorphone. This is completely unacceptable. The street price of hydromorphone has fallen close to 90%, from $20 to two dollars per pill. Basically, any kid can buy them. How many more children have to die before the government reverses course? Our common-sense, Conservative motion before the House today calls on the Prime Minister to end this unsafe supply program and redirect this money into treatment and recovery programs for those addicted to drugs. This is common sense. This is compassion. The radical approach of the NDP-Liberal government is making the addiction crisis worse and does not put those struggling with addiction on a path to recovery. That should always be the goal. The government's approach only pumps more hard drugs onto our streets, killing our citizens, destroying our families and tearing our communities apart. The over supply of these free drugs gets in the hands of organized crime, which then sells them to children. If one gets them for free, any return is a profit. Addictions workers confirm that most users of so-called safe supply are diverting these drugs and reselling them across the country. This is government-funded drug trafficking. How is this for insanity? In Prince George, the police ran a 10-day surveillance operation on a woman who stood outside a downtown IDA Pharmacy every morning trading her so-called safe supply drugs for harder drugs. Police reported dozens of hand-to-hand transactions. The pharmacy manager told the RCMP that patients are given up to 28 hydromorphone pills per day, equating to approximately $480 a day if resold. He also reported that many patients are accosted by people outside the pharmacy wanting to purchase the safe supply drugs. The insanity is the brainchild of big pharma. The term “safe supply” is big pharma's sales jargon, its propaganda, meant to secure government contracts and pad the industry's burgeoning pockets. Let us be clear: Safe supply is a lie. There is nothing safe about fentanyl. The radical NDP-Liberal government bought the big lie, and now Canadians are paying the price in dollars and in deaths. Canadians have the right to know how much they are paying to fuel the crisis. The government refuses to release its contracts with big pharma, covering up the huge cost of this reckless experiment. The radical government does not get it. Its policies are killing Canadians, and it clearly does not care. Despite the death, crime and carnage, the Prime Minister has not ruled out replicating B.C.'s failed drug experiment in other jurisdictions across the country. Our motion calls on the Prime Minister to proactively reject the City of Toronto’s request to legalize deadly hard drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin and meth. The motion further calls on him to deny any future requests from provinces, territories and municipalities seeking federal approval to legalize hard drugs in their jurisdiction. We do not need to export the drug chaos in B.C. to other jurisdictions. The Prime Minister should never have granted a reckless exemption to B.C. to allow open, “in your face” hard drug use in public places. Parks, beaches, transit, sports fields, coffee shops and playgrounds in B.C. have become drug-infested nightmares. A two-year-old girl was hospitalized after putting a discarded needle in her mouth at a park. Even our hospitals, once a beacon of safety, are now lawless spaces where health care workers and patients are put at risk. The B.C. Nurses' Union is sounding the alarm for its members. Patients and staff have been exposed to harmful hard drugs. Meth was even being smoked in a unit just hours after the birth of a newborn baby. This breaks my heart. It should break everyone's hearts. A nurse in Campbell River said she had been exposed to smoke from hard drugs six times. How in God’s name is the government allowing this to happen? I cannot believe I have to say this, but hospitals should be sanctuaries of healing and care, not places of lawlessness and chaos. After nine years, the extremist NDP-Liberal government is not worth the drugs, disorder and death. Only a common-sense Conservative government will end unsupervised and unprescribed use of hard drugs in hospitals. We will end taxpayer-funded narcotics that are killing our children and poisoning our communities. We will focus on treating Canadians struggling with addiction, providing a path to recovery so we can bring our loved ones home drug-free. Hope must be restored. Unlike the radical NDP-Liberal government, we will not give up on people. It is compassion and common sense. The extreme, deadly drug experiment must end and never be repeated.
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