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Marcus Powlowski

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Liberal

Thunder Bay—Rainy River
Ontario
Voting Attendance: 64%
Expenses Last Quarter: $144,359.62

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 251 - Nov/20/23

Mr. Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Lib.)

Nov/20/23 2:20:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Seven Generations Education Institute is an Anishinabe-led organization that provides secondary and post-secondary training to indigenous and non-indigenous people in the Treaty 3 region of northwestern Ontario. It all started in 1985 in the backs of pickup trucks going from community to community. Now it has campuses in Fort Frances, Kenora and Sioux Lookout. The institute teaches people the technical skills needed to find employment, but also teaches Anishinabe language, culture and tradition. Let me acknowledge two young people whose lives have been changed thanks to Seven Generations: Kari Yerxa and Jeremy Andy, both from Couchiching First Nation. Kari completed the women's empowerment program and is now teaching full-time in the community. Andy completed the Anishinaabemowin adult learner program and is now employed by Seven Generations, teaching the Anishinaabemowin language. I invite members to please join Seven Generations' staff and former students, along with the living legend Donald Rusnak and me, in the Sir John A. Macdonald building, room 200, beginning at 5:45 p.m. Meegwetch.

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Context: House Hansard - 26 - Feb/8/22

Mr. Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Lib.)

Feb/8/22 8:08:48 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am happy to speak to this issue, an issue that I have been involved with one way or another for about 30 years or more. As a long-time emergency room doctor, many of those years in Thunder Bay but other places as well, I have seen a lot of overdoses. ICU doctors who work in Thunder Bay and also work in a lot of other places tell me that Thunder Bay is second only to Vancouver in terms of the number of people going to the ICU as a result of overdoses. A few years ago in the Thunder Bay emergency room, we started to notice something different with overdoses. I remember someone coming in unconscious and because of his pinpoint pupils and his slow breathing, I figured he was a narcotics overdose, so I gave him Narcan or Naloxone and sure enough he woke up. After he woke up he asked what happened to him. I said he overdosed on narcotics and he said that he did not because he was smoking crack. Drug dealers have started putting fentanyl and at times carfentanyl, which is the veterinary drug equivalent, which is far stronger, into all kinds of other drugs. People are getting hooked on narcotics and overdosing, not even knowing that it is narcotics they are doing. When narcotic overdoses make it to the emergency room, they usually are okay, but a lot of people unfortunately do not make it to the emergency room. They are either pronounced dead in their house or they arrive VSA, vital signs absent. We try to resuscitate them and unfortunately we cannot. Besides knowing about this problem from my position as an emergency room doctor, I am also familiar with it from my personal experiences. I know a lot of people who have family members and friends who passed away because of overdoses, kids who are growing up without a parent because of an overdose, or parents who lost a child because of an overdose. I also know about this problem because, going door to door in two successive campaigns, a number of people told me about people they lost, usually their children. I know as a parent there is nothing worse than losing a child. Although I would say that certainly it is probably equally as bad for a child to lose a parent. I also know the extent to which drug addiction, mental health, homelessness and crime are intertwined. Last year on the INAN committee on which I sat, we had several women tell us of the problem that indigenous women from farther north communities have when they come to Thunder Bay and they meet some guy with flashy clothes and a flashy car who invites them to a party to try drugs. They try drugs and they get addicted to drugs, and then they are asked to go into prostitution to pay for the price of those drugs. Although our government has done a lot to address addictions, mental health and the opioid crisis, I do not think we have been as successful as we would like to be. Unfortunately, I do not know of any jurisdiction in the world that has been really successful in addressing this problem. As a doctor, we spend a lot of years treating people with overdoses and hopefully maybe saving a few of them. I know the fix I provided in the emergency room was a temporary fix. People would often overdose again, so what is the answer? As a long-time doctor, I think one of the most important things to say as a doctor when we do not know is “I don't know”. I certainly say I do not know what the answer is to the opioid problem, but I do know that we need to do better. I also know that there are many people in Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario working tirelessly to find solutions on a case-by-case basis, and I really commend them for all their hard work. I would also like to make special mention of one group in my riding, a group who will not take no for an answer and have made it their mission to make a difference and that is Team DEK. DEK stands for Dayna Elizabeth Karle, who died due to an accidental overdose this past September. Her mother, Carolyn, and a bunch of like-minded determined women established Team DEK with the goal of establishing a long-term addiction treatment program for women in Thunder Bay, both indigenous and non-indigenous. This project has a lot of support both in Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario. It is really great to see on the issue of the opioid crisis all parties feeling passionately about this. Although we may have different views as to what the best answer to this problem is, hopefully we can leave partisan politics aside and not let it prevent us from considering all options because the only thing that really matters is preventing more needless deaths.

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Context: House Hansard - 26 - Feb/8/22

Mr. Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Lib.)

Feb/8/22 7:52:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton Griesbach, like me, has a riding with a large indigenous population. I wonder how much he thinks the answer to the opioid problem is a matter of directly dealing with opioids and how much of the answer involves dealing with the underlying socio-economic inequality, which is certainly part of the problem and fuels the crisis.

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Member of Parliament

Marcus Powlowski