44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 8, 2022 10:00AM
- Feb/8/22 6:53:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Yukon for his leadership on this issue. The House is better with his contributions.
Earlier, the member for Courtenay—Alberni shared his passion on this issue, as well as the fact that he has put forward a private member's bill that would do what so many in the House have spoken of, which is to move toward this crisis being treated as a public health crisis as opposed to a criminal justice one.
Would the member for Yukon comment on his openness, and potentially that of others in the governing party, to working with other parliamentarians toward bringing that bill to fruition?
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- Feb/8/22 7:54:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I particularly appreciated your choice to quote directly from the report of the expert task force on substance use. I was curious if you would be open to sharing more with the House on recommendation no. 7, which reads, “The Task Force strongly urges Health Canada to respect the sovereign rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada and support their governments in providing appropriate prevention and treatment approaches.”
Would you be open to sharing your advice with parliamentarians on how to ensure that this is brought to fruition?
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- Feb/8/22 10:12:15 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I want to start by thanking the member for Yukon for his leadership in ensuring we have this conversation this evening. It is such an important conversation to come back to the critical need for us to save lives in the midst of a poisoning crisis.
Before we talk about that crisis, I want to share that in Waterloo region alone in 2021, there were around 155 overdose poisoning deaths. As a baseline, to give members a sense, we had 145 deaths from COVID-19 in Waterloo region. As many members also know, the average is now 19 deaths a day across the country.
For those in this place who like talking about the economics of decisions that are made here, in 2017 we spent $6.4 billion on policing, courts and correctional costs with respect to criminalized substances. Tonight and often, I have heard many folks say that this should be a public health matter, not a criminal justice one, and I could not agree more. The good news is that we have advice for all parliamentarians on how to ensure that our legislation reflects that, because the fact is that today it is not true. It continues to be that we are criminalizing unregulated substances across the country. To do that, I would encourage all parliamentarians to review the expert panel's advice from Health Canada on substance use.
This is why I am so supportive of the member for Courtenay—Alberni's private member's bill. It is taking a road map from this third-party advice to move toward legislation that would do exactly that. It would treat this as a matter of public health and, because it is a crisis, which is a view that every speaker this evening has shared, we should move forward with the urgency it deserves.
That is why I would encourage all parliamentarians to support the private member's bill. Specifically, in doing so, that bill includes recommendations from the expert panel, including the decriminalization of simple possession of unregulated drugs, expunging or wiping clean the records of folks so they do not have that discrimination throughout their lives and a national strategy that would include low-barrier access to a safer supply.
As we do that, I also want to point out the need, which was mentioned by the task force, to talk about the social determinants of health while also directly addressing the poisoning crisis we are in. We know that, for those who are currently addicted to unregulated drugs, that is heightened by the lack of access to quality, dignified and affordable housing. It is heightened by the lack of truly universal health care across the country and the lack of proper income supports.
With the rest of my time, I would love to share a quote from a frontline worker in Waterloo region. This is from Alice, who works at the Sanguen Health Centre, who supports and works with people every day who are on the front lines of this crisis. Her words are the following:
Regardless of the political climate, we are going to spend every minute of our day caring about people who use drugs, honouring their lives, their perspectives and their expertise, and advocating with them when their needs are not met. We will continue to build and create relationships that are based on mutual respect and love and walk with people in their times of joy and in times of heartbreak. We will remember each life that has been lost in preventable overdose deaths as the vibrant, complex and beautiful spirits that they were instead of cold statistics, and we will continue to refuse to accept the status quo: that people who use drugs are considered less important than other people in our communities. We will proudly declare to anyone who is listening (and many who aren’t) that people who use drugs are a welcome part of our community, not people happening to our community, just as we have every day for many years.
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- Feb/8/22 10:17:45 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I do agree, and to go a step further, we recognize that mandatory minimum penalties, as has been called out in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, need to be moved away from. I would actually encourage the governing party to go further with that legislation to ensure that we follow through on the calls to action from the TRC.
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Mr. Chair, I thank the member for the question and for the tone with which the question was asked. It sounds like it comes from a place of genuine curiosity.
My perspective is to follow the expert advice that parliamentarians are being given, and that expert advice from the task force on substance use shares very clearly the need to move away from criminalization alongside other recommendations, many of which are reflected in Bill C-216, that would ensure that we would not only save lives but better take care of people across the country.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.
My priority is Bill C‑216, which was introduced here in the House.
It is a mix of policies. We do not need to choose one over the other, as we have in front of us a bill that would allow us to do a mix of what experts are already calling for.
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- Feb/8/22 10:23:24 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, the three-word answer is that we need support, not stigma. We need to recognize that this is part of a vicious cycle. The stigma is part of why we need to move toward decriminalization. That is what helps us move away from this, which was one of the five core challenges the task force called out, as we move toward decriminalization.
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