44th Parl. 1st Sess.

May 9, 2024 10:00AM

May/9/24 12:59:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that member comes from Regina, where there are 66 deaths per 100,000. That is more than 50% higher than British Columbia. Kids are dying from poisoned drugs in his community by accessing unregulated street drugs. In Saskatoon, where brownies are being sold to keep the doors open of safe consumption sites, the deaths are half of what is going on in Regina. When it comes to youth, it is extremely rare for any young person to be prescribed pharmaceutical alternatives and it is always led by physicians. To the member's question, young people can access street drugs anywhere, any time. The streets are flooded with drugs. The police have said that safe supply is not what is killing youth. That is not what is getting youth addicted to drugs. Addiction with youth has not gone up since safe supply moved forward. That is a fact; it is published data. The Conservatives do not believe in peer-reviewed published data. They only support anecdotes. That is what they do. They push it out, and it is harmful and dangerous. It is costing us lives in our country.

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Context: House Hansard - 312 - May/9/24

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

May/9/24 1:06:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to split my time with the chief opposition whip, who is my favourite chief opposition whip. I want to start with those who are suffering, the parents, brothers, sisters and families involved. Our hearts are with them. I want those who are watching to know that there is a better way. There is carnage out there. There are bodies in the streets, their skin punctured by weapons, their veins filled with dangerous chemicals. Surrounding them are debris and unimaginable scenes of human suffering. We have seen it across the country and in no place is it more prevalent than in British Columbia today. This is not a depiction of some horror movie; it is a depiction of what is happening in our streets. It is not because of violence, a scene curated by an award-winning director or special effects. This is what is really happening. It would make us think that we were watching the worst thing we could possibly watch on TV, the government giving away free drugs. It is, frankly, investing in street-level palliative care is what it looks like. We do not have to look much further than the debate we are having today to know how badly the Liberals and the NDP have strayed from consensus on this topic. After nine years of the Liberal-NDP government, and after nine years of the drugs, disorder, chaos and crime, members of Parliament in this place are actively defending and promoting the legalization of hard drugs, like crack, heroin and meth, in hospitals, parks and on buses. It is clear that this is no longer our mothers' Liberal Party. It has an extremist view on this, and so many other issues. Contrary to everything we see every day in our communities, the people who are lying face down on the sidewalks, the endless tent cities, the needles littering playgrounds and public transit, the Liberal-NDP MPs continue to press on with an ideological purity, even as evidence, advocates, their own party members, moms and dads and those in the community tell them that their extremist experiment has failed. It is not hard to find evidence why. It is everywhere. Beyond the scenes we are witnessing in parks, our communities and our own neighbourhoods, the facts and the testimony are everywhere. After the government supported Premier Eby's socialist experiment and plot to legalize the consumption of hard drugs like heroin in public places, overdose deaths went up 380%. That is six people every day in one province. It has become so out of line in hospitals that they were soon mandated to allow drug use even next to cancer patients and newborn babies. Let us picture our grandmothers lying in bed next to a room where a guy is smoking meth. That is where we are at. Not to mention that the B.C. crime rates have gone up seven out of eight years that the Prime Minister has been in power. The problem with the so-called safe supply is not just a British Columbia problem; it is an everywhere problem. Thanks to the government flooding the streets with opioids, powerful and dangerous drugs that used to cost 50 bucks a pill are now being sold for less than two dollars on street corners. Those who are struggling with addiction can sell their fentanyl prescription minutes after getting it and then use the money to buy even harder and more potent drugs. As a result, more and more people are getting sucked into the violent cycle of addiction. People as young as 14 years old are dying from overdoses because they were entrapped into trying these drugs by friends, neighbours and even strangers who they met on the Internet, drugs that were easy to get, easy to sell and easy to get hooked on. It is something the minister actually said was not happening. We can see that what those radical Liberal-NDP MPs are promoting is not a safe supply, but an unsafe supply. It is unsafe for those who use drugs, because instead of treatment they get even more drugs to keep them using for a lifetime, all the while it takes hundreds of days to find a detox bed in almost any city. It is unsafe for individuals recovering from the use of drugs, as relapses and temptations become more common thanks to the flood of fentanyl in our streets. It is unsafe for the communities at large, as kids dodge needles on playgrounds and nurses stop breastfeeding for fear of contaminating their babies after a full day of treating those who use drugs openly in their hospitals. Even in the face of all of this, the Liberals and the NDP want to continue pushing forward and defending their failed record, literally to death. It is not just a hallmark of the government, which ignores and labels everyone it disagrees with while telling Canadians that left is right and up is down. It is emblematic of a government that fundamentally minimizes the value and the dignity of every human being and anybody who wants to get better. It is a government that offers medical assistance in dying to veterans who served our nation, that separated Canadians into categories of vaccinated and unvaccinated, and that called them misogynists. It is a government that would rather pump pills instead of helping people get better. On this side of the House, we believe that every human has value and that everybody, with support, care and compassion, can turn their lives around. We never hear that conversation in the House. We never hear about the ability for somebody to get better. That is why we oppose this misguided plan to legalize free drugs. That is why a Conservative minister of health would invest in treatment and not crack, in recovery and not heroin. However, before there would be a common-sense, Conservative government, there is an even more pressing problem. The Liberals and the NDP want to not only defend their record on drugs but also expand it. If they did not, they would have said that. They still have not rejected requests from cities such as Montreal and Toronto to do exactly what was done in B.C., with exactly the same consequences. The Minister of Health says that the application is dormant, and I suspect that it is dormant until exactly after the next election. As a Toronto-area MP, I know the problems that we have with illegal drugs. I know how bad they are, and I think about what making them legal would do. There would be open drug use and more violence on the TTC; more human suffering right out in the open on our streets, in our parks, in our hospitals, on our buses and on our subways; and more crime, chaos, drugs and disorder in our neighbourhoods that used to feel safe. This has all been propagated by the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, who is from Toronto, and who is selling out her own constituents who want to go to work, raise a family and just live in peace. This is a minister who will not protect her constituents from the reckless drug use, the same minister who has failed to protect the very people who brought her here, and it is not the first time. Even in this crazy world, I thought more people would have the guts and brains to look around at what is happening, look around at what is going on in B.C. and everywhere else, and say no to these irrational free-drug schemes that have proven not to work. Twenty-five hundred people in B.C. have been lost, which is six people a day, and there is even more evidence after nine years of this Liberal-NDP coalition. The Liberals have absolutely lost their minds on this. Worse, if somebody, 10 years ago, accused the Prime Minister of legalizing the smoking of crack in a hospital room, I would call them crazy and say that he would never do that. However, here we are today, where it was legal up until the request, and up until the 11 days it took the government to come back on that request, and it still has not ruled it out for other cities. I would call him insane. I would call that experiment insane, yet it is true today. What is more insane, if we are going to call it for what it is, and it is the most insane policy this government has ever put forward, is that the Liberals will call us insane for saying that, which is gaslighting to the nth degree. I look forward to a day when the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, the member for York Centre, is no longer allowed to give away free drugs; when people, in their darkest moments, can get the help they need, treatment, to bring home their loved ones drug-free; and when communities, kids and neighbourhoods are fully protected from this scourge. The Liberals' views are extreme, and do not let anybody ever tell those who are watching that this is not anything but extreme. They have become an extremist party with extremist policies.

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House Hansard - 312