44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 18, 2023 10:00AM
- May/18/23 10:28:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have lost thousands of lives to an unregulated toxic drug supply. What do the Conservatives do? They bring forward this motion, play politics with people's lives and oversimplify a really important health issue.
Health Canada created an expert task force on substance use. It included members from public health, indigenous health, communities, business, unions, universities, social service agencies, law enforcement and public policy thinkers. They said that we need a safer supply of substances, that we need to stop criminalizing people who use drugs, which causes more harm, and, yes, that we need treatment-on-demand, recovery, education and prevention. The Leader of the Opposition calls them activists. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Moms Stop the Harm, the chief coroner of British Columbia and the chief medical health officer of British Columbia all support a safer supply.
Will the leader of the Conservative Party allow his colleagues and members to go back into their communities next week and meet with their chief medical health officers, their chief coroners and law enforcement? Will he allow a free vote on this motion, or is he going to continue to do more harm?
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- May/18/23 10:44:37 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is worried about vending machines selling safe supply. He should be worried about the unregulated toxic drugs that are being distributed, manufactured and marketed by organized crime on almost every downtown street corner across the country. It can be found on the dark web. It is not safe supply that is killing people; it is fentanyl.
The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs put out a statement. In its report, it endorses access to users of a safe supply of pharmaceutical-grade opioids to combat the uncertain composition of illegal street drugs, which is the cause of many overdoses. It further has made a recommendation in favour of supervised consumption sites, where people can use drugs in a clean, safe environment under the supervision of health professionals trained in emergency intervention.
For my colleague who is a member of a party that says it is the “law-and-order party”, will that party listen to the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs?
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- May/18/23 10:59:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first we heard the Conservative from Fraser Valley rail against harm reduction when, in fact, they support harm reduction and they support treatment and recovery. There is no war between harm reduction and treatment and recovery. We need them both.
Today, I am seeing the Conservatives spreading misinformation, which is costly in a health crisis. However, we also see the Liberals taking an incremental approach, which costs lives. I asked the minister repeatedly to scale up efforts. This is a national health crisis. The government is spending less than 1% of what it spent on the COVID-19 crisis and the response to that. We have lost almost as many lives.
We look at the money the government spent on the AIDS crisis, on SARS and on other health crises. It goes beyond being pale in comparison. When is the government going to scale up on safe supply? When is it going to get involved in the recovery and treatment on demand? We need the government to get involved. It cannot keep downloading this to the provinces. That is where Portugal stepped up. We need the federal government to scale up with rapid investments so that, when people need help, they get it and we meet them where they are at.
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Mr. Speaker, much as I am disappointed to see this motion come forward in the manner it has, I am also happy to see that we are having this conversation and debate today, because over 35,000 people have died from a toxic drug supply in this country since 2016.
This is not an opioid crisis as the motion states; rather, these deaths have occurred because of a toxic, unregulated drug supply, and I am going to speak to a couple of things in the motion.
First, (iii) of the motion states:
since tax-funded drug supply was ramped up in 2020, opioid deaths have only gone up, according to the Public Health Agency
Yes, of course, they have. Between 2016 and 2020, fentanyl became the predominant drug on the market, meaning more people were accessing it instead of pills like oxycontin. Fentanyl analogs, like carfentanil and benzodiazepines, also appeared in the drug supply at this time. More people have died because the fentanyl supply has become more widely accessible and more volatile.
There were fewer than 1,000 people across Canada, probably around 500, accessing safe supply in 2020, with a denominator of tens of thousands of people were using fentanyl, and probably hundreds of thousands. There were 22,000 people who died from an overdose by 2020 under the current government. It is impossible that the 500 people or fewer who were on safe supply, the mass majority of whom are alive in 2023, drove those 22,000 deaths. Conservatives need to learn to do the math and listen to the experts.
It states in (iv) of the motion:
in 2020, slightly less than 7,000 people died of opioid overdoses, while only 3,000 died of overdoses in 2016, according to the Library of Parliament
Again, Conservatives cannot back that up. Those people died from a toxic drug supply. We know these deaths are not occurring because of the government's safe supply and safe injection programs, and to assert that is disinformation.
I am going to talk about some of the activists the government has highlighted. It said that activists are leading the safe supply charge. We know that provincial chief coroners and chief medical health officers across the country, like in my home province, and the police have said that.
I will read a quote from the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, which made it very clear that its members cannot police their way out of this because it is a health issue. It proposed “diverting people dealing with substance abuse or addiction issues away from the criminal system and toward social services and health care. The association stipulated such a change would need to be synchronized nationally.” The government has not done this.
It also cited in its report that it “endorsed access to users of a safe supply pharmaceutical-grade opioids to combat the uncertain composition of illegal street drugs, which is the cause of many opioid overdoses.”
“It further made a recommendation in favour of supervised consumption sites — where people could use drugs in a clean, safe environment, under the supervision of health professionals trained in emergency intervention.”
The activists are supporting safe supply. This is deeply concerning when I see the Conservative leader cite that it is only activists who are advocating.
Also, there is one thing in the speech by the Conservative leader that I would like to correct. He talked about incidents of youth being trafficked safer supply.
Today, in The Globe and Mail:
Vancouver Police, asked...about the possible sale of such narcotics, said in a recent statement that “there's always a potential” for safe-supply medication to be sold on the illicit market.
However, the force added they are not aware of any incidents in Vancouver in which safe supply has been trafficked to youth...
This was in response to the comments the Conservative leader has made here in the House of Commons. I can assure the House that the members of the Vancouver police know and are certain that youth are being targeted with illegal, unregulated, poisoned drugs, such as fentanyl, which is not regulated. This is what we are dealing with.
In (vi) of the motion it states:
recently, a Global News reporter in East Vancouver was able to buy 26 hits for $30 in just 30 minutes of a dangerous and highly addictive opioid that is distributed in tax-funded drug supply programs and flooding our streets with cheap opioids,
People can buy anything on that corner and have been able to for decades, at least over 50 years, so it is not great evidence if they go to the most robust drug-selling corner in Canada and that is what they come back with.
The photos of what they purchased show that most drugs were in a blister pack. A blister pack is issued to one patient. So, the Global reporter bought most of the 26 pills from just one person, and it is not evidence of a wide-scale diversion to buy from one person.
The motion today could have been about calling on the government to create an emergency committee of Parliament to deal with the toxic drug crisis. It is the leading cause of unnatural death in my home province; more than motor vehicle accidents, more than homicide and more than death by suicide. However, the Conservatives did not do that. They chose to bring forward this motion, which creates more stigma and more harm actually.
A person who decides to use a single dose of a toxic drug at a weekend party is as vulnerable as any struggling person with problematic substance use, and the result can be the same: a fatal, toxic drug overdose. I know this, because in my home community, we have seen lots of people die, and lots of young men. The average age of people who are dying is 44, and the majority of them are men dying at home alone.
Guy Felicella, a peer clinical supervisor at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, said that “People who aren't ready, able or interested in addressing their addiction don't deserve to die from the toxic drug supply.” I agree.
I have risen in the House on many occasions, as members know very well, in support of a health-based approach to substance use. I would like to welcome all members from all sides of the House who are joining our call for increased investment to respond to this crisis and for people who are suffering with substance use disorder. The sooner we can actually come together across political lines to make this happen, the sooner we are going to save lives.
This is a national health crisis, and we are not acting like that. However, we need to understand what we are dealing with when looking at this crisis. It is not the easy, simplistic approach that the Conservatives are bringing forward. This crisis will never end through just investing in treatment and recovery without recognizing that this is a complex emergency, it is multi-faceted and it requires harm reduction as well, which go hand in hand; they are not pitted against each other.
Government members want to say that they are doing everything they can, but they spent less than 1% of what they spent on the COVID-19 health crisis. This is not responding to a health crisis in the way that needs to happen. We saw how they responded to SARS, HIV and COVID, and they need to do what they did there. They need to pull everyone together. They cannot just download treatment and recovery to the provinces. We saw what Portugal did. It stepped up and showed us what courage looks like and what is needed: investments in therapeutic treatment, housing and ensuring that we are dealing with this issue as a health crisis, not a criminal issue. It takes a multi-faceted approach, and I am really encouraging that today, but we need to simply do more of what we talked about.
We need to listen to experts. It is so important that everybody in the House listen to the experts. I travelled across this country when I was talking about my bill, Bill C-216, which was just a reflection of the Expert Task Force on Substance Use. I was able to meet with people on the front line of this crisis, such as people who use substance and experts, and the whole time they encouraged us to listen to the report.
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police of Canada, as I have cited, has come forward very much in alignment with the expert task force, and actually had a seat on that task force. The task force was unanimous in that we need to stop criminalizing people who use substances, we need to expunge records of people who have been charged with personal possession, and we need to ensure that people have access to a safe supply and treatment on demand. So, we meet them where they are at and we invest in recovery, education and prevention, because we know that when people relapse, we need to catch them, but we also need to meet them where they are at through the whole thing.
My bill was defeated, as members know. The Conservatives teamed up with the majority of the Liberals and they voted against my bill, which was supported by the Bloc, the Greens and the NDP. I know that members of the Bloc had some issues with my bill, but they wanted to at least get it to committee and listen to the experts, which both the Conservatives and Liberals would not do, despite the fact that it just reflected the government's own Expert Task Force on Substance Use.
Moms Stop the Harm is coming to the Hill on the anniversary of the bill, which comes up not next week, our break week, but when we come back. It will be June 1. They are coming here because they are upset that, a year later, not a lot has changed. That bill would have given the government 12 months to come back with a strategy on how to respond to the expert task force on substance use, but they voted against it. I am hoping that every member in this House will at least meet the moms, and when they go back to their riding, talk to their chief medical health officer. I have not found one chief medical health officer, or a coroner, who does not support taking a multi-faceted approach and supporting safer supply.
I also urge the leader of the official opposition to meet with the chiefs of police. Hopefully, again, he will meet with the moms from Moms Stop the Harm. I know that the leader of the official opposition has been using Global News reports, the National Post and even Conrad Black to get his advice on how to move forward in terms of this toxic drug crisis.
We really need to get back to ensuring that we are listening to the report by the expert task force. I want to talk about who was on it. There were public health officials; indigenous health leaders; community health leaders; business, labour, university and social service agencies; the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs; public policy thinkers; and people with lived and living experience. They were unanimous in their recommendations. I want to give huge credit and thanks to that task force, because they put a lot of work in. Again, they embraced the four-pillar approach.
I understand that it takes courage to make this journey. We saw courage in Vancouver under former senator Larry Campbell. He was a police officer, then the chief coroner for British Columbia and then the mayor of Vancouver. He was the one who brought in Insite and safe consumption sites to save lives. That is the kind of courage we need today from everybody here. Again, we can look to other countries, such as Portugal, for their treatment and recovery programs. We can look at Switzerland, which has a safe supply model. There are models around the world.
I hope that we can come together today and talk about how we can find a pathway to actually work together. However, the stigma that is attached to substances is a huge barrier for people when it comes to getting help. We know that even today's motion is triggering a lot of people who use substances and were looking at safe supply as a pathway out of supporting the unregulated toxic drug supply that is coming from the streets. This supply is manufactured, distributed and marketed through organized crime.
We know we need to go further. We have to invest in a full spectrum to support people who use substances, including supervised consumption sites; real-time, on-demand public treatment options; and pharmaceutical-grade options and alternatives to illegal street drugs. We also have to ensure that people have housing. I was in the riding of my good colleague, the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, and we went to a no-barrier housing place. It was great to see some of the people there being able to access OAT or safer supply, which they could not do when they were homeless, living in the bush or living wherever they could. We need to make sure that this is included.
When we call for more treatment services, let us recognize that, first, we must keep people alive by reducing their exposure to the toxicity of illegal street drugs. My good friend, the member for Vancouver East, represents the Downtown Eastside, a community struggling for survival and ravaged by toxic drug deaths. She once told this House that dead people cannot be treated. How true is that?
I just want to also do some fact checking here. I am going to read a quote from Corey Ranger. He is a clinical nurse specialist from AIDS Vancouver Island. He cites that there are “more sensationalist media hit-pieces about safe supply than actual safe supply. In BC, well-over 101,000 people are at risk of fatal drug poisonings, and less than 5% of those individuals are able to get a ‘safe supply’”. That is exactly what is happening. This incremental approach by the government is failing people who use substances. We know incrementalism costs lives in a health crisis.
However, the Conservatives' misinformation also costs lives. It is deadly. I do appreciate the Conservatives bringing forward this notion to move money from harm reduction to treatment, but even that is not close to enough money.
I want to read a quote from Guy Felicella. He says, “I've been to/left treatment over a dozen times to try & stay sober. If it wasn't for harm reduction services like supervised consumption sites, safer alternatives, naloxone and clean supplies to protect me in my relapses, I wouldn't be alive today or have the decade of sobriety that I do. Don't listen to people who attempt to misinform you that harm reduction enables drug use; it enables people to stay alive and for many to try recovery again.”
I want to make sure that we talk about the importance of trauma-informed treatment and ensure that it is available to people. A constituent wrote to me and said he was going to have to sell his house to keep his son in treatment; it was $300 a day. That is completely unacceptable. We can look to Portugal, which has taken huge steps on this. In my home community of the Alberni Valley, we lost 20 people by the eight-month mark last year. It is a community of 30,000 people. We are four times the national average, and this disproportionately impacts indigenous people.
I think we all know the numbers. I do not need to get too heavily into that. I hope every member of this House will read the report from the expert task force on substance use. I hope everyone will reach out to their community leaders, to their chief medical health officer, to their law enforcement, to the experts in their community and, most importantly, the moms who have lost loved ones, in the week ahead. This is something that I will be advocating for.
I am going to talk about safe supply and the pilots that have been happening. Ottawa has had a significant increase. There is a claim that people do not actually use their safe supply and that they just sell it to others. This is a quote from the former Stephen Harper legal adviser, Professor Ben Perrin. He stated, “Participants in the Ottawa safer supply program reduced their use of illicit fentanyl by 85% while on the program.”
We have seen great results at Parkdale Queen West. In London, Dr. Sereda has been running a really important program. We know that safer supply reduces the risk of death and overdose, reduces reliance on an unregulated supply of drugs, increases access to engagement with health and social services, improves social well-being and stability, reduces ER visits and hospitalizations, improves physical and mental health, and reduces health care costs. It also reduces criminal activity. Those are the facts from these studies. It certainly helps people get their life back.
We have heard some participants speak about what safe supply has done for them. These are some of the things people have said: “My whole lifestyle improved”, “Got my life back”, “My life has improved drastically”, “It saved my life”, “I function productively in society”, “My life is getting better”, “Frees time to do more constructive things”, “More energy and confidence to focus on my art” and “Opened a whole new outlook and positive way of living”. The list is long.
I know that what we are doing is not working. We are seeing a government take a very weak approach in responding to a health crisis; the lack of investments and the lack of urgency show the underlying stigma. This is the stigma, right there with the government and its failed approach, as well as its inability to pull together all parties in this crisis.
One thing I understand about the Conservatives and what they are bringing forward is frustration. Canadians are frustrated by the lack of action by the government to respond to this crisis. However, this does not mean that the response should be guided by misinformation. It does not mean we cut off safe supply as a tool to keep people alive, to ensure that people are able to get the help they need and to find a pathway to recovery and to treatment.
This motion today, to gut the harm reduction program and to stop safe supply in its tracks without proper evidence and science, does not make sense. It goes against what police, chief medical officers, coroners, moms, experts, those the Conservatives deem as activists, and the expert task force on substance use say.
I hope this dialogue, this conversation, can be turned around. I hope we can try to come together and find some common ground to deal with this crisis that is right before us. It is impacting everybody here.
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- May/18/23 12:07:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the choice is this: If they can get access to a safer supply, then there is interaction, which means an opportunity to work with individuals; if they do not have that option, they are going to the street. That means they are getting their drugs from an unregulated supply from organized crime.
The motion today would take away safe supply and tell people to go to the street. The police have said that they cannot arrest their way out of this problem; this problem is not going away. We have to listen to the experts. The chief coroner in B.C. is going to be reporting today. She is saying that we need a safe supply program to be rolled out, not this incremental approach, by the way.
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- May/18/23 12:09:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is a former police officer, and today's motion goes against the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and many other police forces across this country.
I will speak to the bill that the member talked about. The bill was to ensure that people in federal penitentiaries who were serving two years plus a day would get treatment. Here is why New Democrats voted against it: First, it excluded people who had been charged with drug trafficking or violent crime. How many people in federal penitentiaries would that exclude? It would exclude a lot. Second, the bill was not supported by the national organizations that advocate for prisoners and their health in prisons. In fact, Conservatives got caught using quotes without approval from some of those stakeholders and organizations. Those organizations raised that with me and told me not to support that bill or anything like it.
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- May/18/23 12:11:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I do agree that we need to have a proper, respectful dialogue.
I just want to backtrack to the question from the Conservative Party. Every person incarcerated deserves health and treatment. That is actually the law in this land. It is not being delivered by the government, so that bill would be ineffective in what it was asking for. It is just an action and, again, the government is failing people who are incarcerated as well.
On what my colleague was saying about safe supply, the evidence speaks for itself. We need to continue to be driven by evidence and science in how we design our policies. The expert task force on substance use guided my bill, which was voted against by Conservatives in the House. They voted against the government's own expert task force.
They do not want to hear from the experts. They call them “activists”. They call the police chiefs “activists”. They say the chief coroners are “activists, public health officers are “activists”, and moms who have lost their kids are “activists”. They are not activists. They are people with lived experience who understand this issue and have actually done the work.
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- May/18/23 12:13:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is the false dichotomy: that we cannot have harm reduction and we need to have treatment. We need both. We need to meet people where they are at.
With respect to the notion that this is failing, it has not even gotten off the ground yet. It is in its infancy. It has basically just started, and the results and evidence are staggering. It is lowering people's involvement in criminal activity, and there are fewer people using the deadly fentanyl. They are not going to organized crime to get their drugs, which is everywhere in this country.
Is the government failing? Yes, it is. However, the war-on-drugs approach the Conservatives are bringing forward would be a disaster. We know that.
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- May/18/23 12:15:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said, my colleague brought me to his riding and I got to see first-hand some of the really great work that people in his community are doing, especially around no-barrier housing, ensuring people have a safe place to live while they are getting away from the toxic drug supply, and using safe supply or OAT.
The difference right now is that, if they go to the street supply, it is a toxic concoction. They do not even know what they are getting. Using a safer supply of substances means people can stay alive. We are not seeing people dying from a safer supply. They are dying from fentanyl. That is what is happening.
It needs to be evidence-based. The chief coroner of B.C. has said that safe supply is not killing people and that over 80% of people who are dying had fentanyl, which was made on the street, sold on the street, and marketed and manufactured on the street. It is not acceptable.
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- May/18/23 12:45:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what the Conservative motion today would do is have everybody who uses drugs go to the streets. They would get unregulated, toxic drugs, which are flooding our streets.
It is not safe supply that is killing people. Safe supply is still in its infancy. Very few people are on it or could even access it.
Again, I want to go back to the OAT and the safe supply conversation. I really appreciated the member talking about that. OAT is critical and absolutely essential, but people who feel it is not strong enough are going to the street to top up. This is where we need to have safe supply, and work with OAT in cohesion.
Also, this is supported by the Police Chiefs of Canada. This is supported by Gwen Boniface, the former OPP police chief who has a bill in the Senate. This is supported by Vancouver police, who called out the Leader of the Conservative Party this morning in The Globe and Mail for misinformation.
Why are the Conservatives railing against the police, when they are the tough-on-crime party?
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- May/18/23 2:03:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Parksville has lost a legend.
Phil St. Luke was lovingly known throughout the community as Flyin' Phil. He brought joy to all who knew him, and most people did, whether through waving during his daily walks through the streets of Parksville, working with him as a community volunteer, cheering him on during the annual Canada Day parade or chatting with him in a local coffee shop or at community events.
Flyin' Phil represented the very best in humanity, and his kind, loving and uplifting spirit is greatly missed. He succumbed to cancer in January at the age of 70. Our community will gather to celebrate his life next month, and funds are being raised for a public statue so his spirit will live on.
Rest in peace, Flyin' Phil. He enriched the lives of an entire community, and for this we are forever grateful.
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- May/18/23 2:29:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals gave over $100 million worth of federal contracts to their friends at McKinsey since 2015, despite McKinsey playing a major role in pushing opioids to vulnerable people. That was $100 million to a company that worsened the toxic-drug crisis. The government even knows McKinsey is terrible, as it has joined a lawsuit to hold the company accountable.
Therefore, why do the Liberals not stop giving money to McKinsey and use that money to appropriately respond to combatting the toxic-drug crisis that is killing people in our country?
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