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House Hansard - 323

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 3, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 323 - Jun/3/24
Mr. Tako Van Popta (Langley—Aldergrove, CPC)
  • Jun/3/24 9:23:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on May 3 in question period, I asked a question about the failed drug legalization pilot project in British Columbia. I say it was a failed project because we were about one year into a three-year pilot project. The evidence was clear that it was failing, with 2,500 toxic drug deaths in the first year of the project, a 7% increase over the previous year. There was crime and chaos on the streets, and there were many reports from many different communities, including mine, about abuse on the streets. British Columbians were not happy with all of the negativity, and the provincial government was feeling the heat. It knew it had to do something, and in fact, it did. It introduced provincial legislation, the restricting consumption of illegal substances act, to put some restrictions in place on the open use of drugs in parks, playgrounds, hospitals, transit etc., and to give the police some extra authority. An organization called the Harm Reduction Nurses Association challenged the legislation in the B.C. Supreme Court and convinced the judge to impose a temporary injunction preventing the B.C. government from actually bringing the new law into effect. According to the judge, prohibiting people from using drugs in public places was an infringement of their constitutional right under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “the right to life, liberty and security of the person”. I was stunned by that, as I am sure many Canadians were. Is that what section 7 is all about? Is it about a constitutionally protected right to use drugs in public places? When there were no exemptions at all to the federal legislation, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, no decriminalization of drugs for personal use, and no public experiments with hard drugs, as had been the case for all of Canadian history up until a year ago, there were never any arguments about whether people had a constitutional right to use drugs in public places. Once the federal government opened that door just a bit, it also opened the door to new and novel arguments to expand charter rights to include open drug use in public places. I have to ask myself some questions. What happened to the big vision of a just society that inspired the original drafters of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? What happened to giving people hope for a better life? What happened to health and treatment? I know that the Liberals claim to be the party of the charter, and they often demonize the Conservative Party by suggesting we are going to gut the charter, but I do not think we have any lessons to learn from the Liberal Party on this. What we have seen with the Liberal government's ill-conceived ideas is that they are far removed from what the original drafters of the charter thought about a just society for all Canadians. Will the Liberal government put a complete end to the disastrous, failed drug-use experiment altogether and instead give people hope for a better future?
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