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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 304

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 29, 2024 11:00AM
  • Apr/29/24 2:18:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the current numbers are tragic: 25% of Quebeckers live below the threshold for a normal standard of living. This poverty is the direct result of the centralizing, inflationary and bureaucratic spending by the Prime Minister. That spending is fully supported by the Bloc Québécois. When will the Bloc Québécois and the Prime Minister stop impoverishing Quebeckers?
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  • Apr/29/24 2:20:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost to Quebeckers, who are paying twice as much for rent, housing and the national debt. This Prime Minister is spending more on interest on the debt, $54.1 billion, than on health care. Even worse than that, the Bloc Québécois voted for each and every one of this Prime Minister's $500-billion budget allocations. Once again, when will this Prime Minister and the Bloc Québécois stop impoverishing Quebeckers?
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  • Apr/29/24 2:21:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the Prime Minister is not worth the drugs, disorder, death and destruction. In May 2022, he granted the B.C. NDP government's request for a Criminal Code exemption to allow crack, meth, heroin and fentanyl use in parks, coffee shops, hospitals and beaches. Overdose deaths since have exploded to a record-smashing 2,500 lost lives. The B.C. NDP government has reversed course and asked the federal government to recriminalize some hard drugs. Why will the Prime Minister not recriminalize these deadly drugs?
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  • Apr/29/24 2:22:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister is wasting time while people are dying. In the year after this radical Prime Minister granted the decriminalization of crack, heroin and other hard drugs in parks and hospitals, 2,500 people died. Overdose deaths, during the nine years of the Prime Minister, have tripled, the fastest rising of the 11 countries studied by the Commonwealth Fund. Nurses are afraid to go to work because they have to put up with addicts using meth, crack and weapons in their hospital rooms. Nurses are having to give up on breastfeeding, because they are worried their kids will be contaminated with the drugs they breathe in. What the hell are they thinking over there? Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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  • Apr/29/24 2:23:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it. They are not thinking over there.
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  • Apr/29/24 2:26:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I unequivocally disavow the guy who spent the first half of his adult life as a practising racist, dressing up in blackface, and who has since accepted the support of Hamas. He has accepted the support of Hamas, and now he has brought on the extremist and radical position of allowing legal drug use in playgrounds, hospitals and coffee shops, which has led to the mass death of our people. Will he refuse the demand of Toronto to replicate the decriminalization nightmare in B.C.?
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  • Apr/29/24 3:46:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a matter of grave, urgent and time-sensitive importance. Your decision on whether to grant this emergency debate will be a life or death decision. If you question that, let me share with you the statistics and the background. In May 2022, the Prime Minister announced that he was granting British Columbia's NDP government an exemption to the Criminal Code prohibition on crack, heroin, meth and other deadly drugs. In January the following year, 2023, that exemption took effect, which decriminalized those aforementioned drugs and their use in playgrounds, hospitals, parks, transit and other places where children and vulnerable people are exposed to the risks. The results are now in, and they are irrefutable. In the 12 months that followed the decriminalization of those hard drugs, British Columbia had a record-smashing 2,500 drug overdose deaths. This represents a 380% increase in said deaths since the Prime Minister took office. In other words, in the period since these policies came into effect, we have seen drug overdose deaths increase by a factor of four. Furthermore, Canada now has the fastest-growing drug overdose death rate and the second-highest total rate of any of the 11 countries reviewed by The Commonwealth Fund. In other words, people are dying as a direct result of these policies. This is not simply my claim; it is now the NDP government's admission. As I said at the outset, it was the NDP government that asked for the decriminalization, which the Prime Minister granted. That provincial government has now reversed itself and has asked for the government to urgently recriminalize drugs in many public places. It is an admission that this policy is taking lives. This is where the urgency comes in. Every day in British Columbia, six people die of drug overdoses. This is by far the highest overdose rate anywhere in Canada. It is something that even the NDP government is now attributing, in part, to the decriminalization. Unfortunately, that provincial government needs the federal government's permission to reimpose criminal sanctions on those drugs, something that the minister refused to grant today. That means that even though the NDP government in B.C. wants to recriminalize it, as I stand here and as the clock ticks, decriminalization is in place. Every single day that goes by before the Prime Minister reverses himself, decriminalized drugs will be killing people on the streets of Vancouver, on Vancouver Island, in the Lower Mainland and in other places across the province. An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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  • Apr/29/24 3:51:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, anyone who believes six deaths per day is not an emergency needs to give their head a shake. Anybody who says that 2,500 deaths a year is not an emergency needs to give their head a shake. Those numbers, by the way, do not include the indirect deaths caused by drug-induced crime on innocent bystanders who might just be taking their kids to a local Starbucks before they get stabbed in front of their family and die in a puddle of their own blood, which is then broadcast on social media, as we have seen. Those are the kinds of horrific scenes that have become commonplace ever since the Prime Minister and the NDP radical policy was implemented. Given that we are losing six lives a day, given that the reversal of the policy could prevent some of those lost lives, or at the very least, that such a matter should be debated, and given that the clock is ticking as the NDP government in B.C. awaits a decision from the Prime Minister and his health minister, this is an emergency. We ask the Speaker to join with common-sense Conservatives to allow for this debate to happen immediately so that we can stop the drugs, disorder, death and destruction that the radical NDP-Liberal decriminalization policy has caused.
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