- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Montcalm
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $126,025.95
- Government Page
- May/9/24 5:26:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hope that my colleague understood what I said.
He talked about the fact that the war on drugs, criminalization, is a model that does not work. We can compare the model used in the United States, where overdoses increased by 100%, to the one used in Portugal.
Can my colleague elaborate on that?
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- May/9/24 4:53:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is urging us to vote in favour of the Conservative motion. The problem is that the motion muddies the waters. Legalization is not decriminalization. Only Vancouver tried decriminalization. Toronto and Montreal have not done it, nor have they decided to do it. They are trying to set up diversion measures instead.
Here is the problem. My colleague may not be an expert, but he should at least be able to define these three concepts, these three tools, so that everyone understands what is happening and what measures are being implemented. I see why my colleague cannot do that: Even his own leader cannot do it. They member's colleague may well be a doctor, but that does not give the member the authority to say that his colleague's comments were accurate when they were not. That is my comment.
Is my colleague saying that Montreal wants to legalize hard drugs? Is that what he is saying?
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- May/9/24 12:34:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, decriminalization, British Columbia's pilot project, has nothing to do with overdoses, but it did make it possible to divert these people away from jail and the justice system.
We need to be careful, though. Yes, this is true, but drug consumption can qualify for diversion too, because in co-operation with community projects, we can ensure that police intervene, that they be authorized to intervene, but that they refrain from arresting the individual. Perhaps this is what B.C. is returning to.
The fact remains that we agree on one thing: These people must receive care, but above all, we need the resources to give them care, and we must stop feeling like we have done enough by simply diverting the individual, because we are leaving them in the street alone with their problems. We need to invest heavily in health care. The government has been miserly about investing in health care, and so have the Conservatives. Health transfers need to be increased, because the provinces and Quebec are the ones that are taking care of these people and that have to treat them, and they are crying poverty. We must not undermine all the good things that are being done to take care of these people with the inadequate means at hand. This needs to be heard in our debate.
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- May/9/24 11:49:34 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the Conservative leader's response to one of my colleagues who was asking him to make the distinction between legalization, decriminalization and diversion. He said it was just semantics, that there was no real difference, that people just made up those distinctions depending on the context.
What does the minister think of the Conservative leader's ignorance?
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- Feb/13/24 9:32:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, some Conservatives seem to think the Criminal Code no longer exists. We have had these debates before. When someone nefarious is working in the health care system, they simply need to be fired and reported to the police. That can happen. The provisions are there.
I therefore invite my colleagues who know of cases like this, which are always very specific cases, to report these people to the police. Are we going to generalize to such an extent that we are going to prevent any suffering person from asserting their right to self-determination and deciding what is good for them when it comes to something as intimate as their own death?
It is odd that Conservatives are libertarians when it comes to economics, yet when it comes to moral issues, they think the government needs to be in charge.
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- Oct/20/22 7:19:52 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I do not know whether my colleague remembers what I said about my NDP colleague's bill, but the Bloc Québécois is very much in favour of approaches designed to divert those cases. The purpose of diversion is not solely to free up space in courts and jails, though. Diversion will only work with adequate funding and the concerted action required to ensure that these people do not wind up out in the streets with their problems. Decriminalizing drug dependency is not enough to clear anyone's conscience. That is not what this is about.
That is why Bill C‑5 is a step in the right direction. I do not know if the Conservatives voted in favour of Bill C‑5, but it seems like a step in the right direction to me. With that and the necessary resources, we will make progress in dealing with this issue, but there has to be money for this. To me, the leader in best practices for drug dependency is Portugal.
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- Jun/9/22 1:12:27 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned Portugal. He raised the issue of the financial resources that must support such a process. João Goulão was the author of this reform in Portugal. In response to someone who asked if they should go ahead with this diversion, or decriminalization, as he called it, he replied that, if the means were not there, and if the necessary funding was not provided for frontline resources, it would be better to leave the problem to the justice system.
I would like to ask my colleague if he feels the government is willing to inject the necessary funds to support a reform seeking to resolve such fundamental problems as the opioid crisis.
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- Jun/9/22 12:59:56 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I will try to remain calm. I am not sure I properly understood the intervention of my colleague, who cynically described people with addictions as criminals who deserve mercy from the government.
Is the Conservative member aware of what is happening around the world in the fight against addiction? Does he know how many heroin addicts there were in Portugal before diversion programs and decriminalization were brought in? There were 100,000. Today, there are only 15,000.
I would like the member to clarify what he meant and drop the cynicism toward people addicted to heroin or other substances.
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- Jun/9/22 12:45:12 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, it certainly was not the idea of the century for the government to introduce within Bill C‑5 two completely different problems, but my colleague did not say much about the issue of diversion measures for addiction. I want to know what he thinks about the fact that we are criminalizing people with addictions. Does he really think that this is the answer to ending the opioid crisis, for example, when this same approach has been used for about 50 years?
I would like his thoughts on that.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C‑216 from the member for Courtenay—Alberni, whom I like very much and have known since 2015. He is a noble-hearted man. I am confident that he brings his bill to us today, at the passage-in-principle stage, because he hopes to address this acutely alarming issue.
I will read out the summary because the bill has three parts. I would have thought the government would want to put these eggs in its Bill C‑5 basket, but apparently not. I am just thinking out loud, but the fact remains that the Bloc Québécois falls somewhere in between. I will explain its position.
First, this enactment amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to repeal a provision that makes it an offence to possess certain substances. It also makes consequential amendments to other acts.
Second, it enacts the Expungement of Certain Drug-related Convictions Act. We debated this and talked about how someone who gets stopped for simple possession is in trouble not only on human level, because they have substance abuse issues, but also because they are left with a criminal record and all the associated stigma.
The third part is important in my opinion. Substance use is a complex problem and phenomenon, and a national strategy on substance use is important, but what I find most intriguing is that the bill requires the Minister of Health to develop a national strategy to address the harm caused by problematic substance use.
The thing is, in the bill itself, it says this whole strategy, including the decriminalization of simple possession, will be implemented the year after the act comes into force. For now, I need to think about this because it raises some issues.
I am going to do something I have never done in the House. Medical assistance in dying is another difficult issue, but I have never shared a personal experience. I want people to understand that things have evolved. There is a thing called sociology of law. We have come a long way, and it is great to hear all members of the House because nowadays, in 2022, we no longer see problems associated with drug use as a crime issue; we see them as a public health issue, a socioeconomic issue and, sometimes, a mental health issue.
I had the privilege of having an experience in my life that made me grow. It was in 1998, 24 years ago. After that, I could never again look at a homeless person with multiple addictions in the same way when I saw them on the street. Why?
I had some communications students come to me and ask me for some ethical guidance. They told me about a place called Chez ma cousine Evelyn, which served as a kind of buffer zone. Speaking of diversion, there was a pilot project at the time. In order to get a bed, a place, a room in that house—and there were not many beds—you had to be homeless, an addict, and HIV positive. You had to have all three of those problems.
We set out looking for people like that downtown, and we identified a huge number of young people under 35 who met those criteria. Unfortunately, there were no resources.
We approached these people and got them to speak with us. They could be anyone, including me or anyone here, a grandson, my daughter or a neighbour's daughter. These people had a life story that had nothing to do with their current state. Some were remarkable. I remember one person who had studied at Oxford. We would have coffee very early in the morning and she would teach me about philosophy, even though she was at the point where she did not care about anything other than her substance use.
These people were well known to the local police and therefore could go to sleep at Chez ma cousine Évelyne, consume substances there and be supervised by workers who helped manage their consumption. What is interesting, they told us, is that the first few times they injected, they would hide in the bedroom to do it, even though they were allowed do it there without any problem. If the police saw them on the street late at night, needing a ride, the police would bring them back to Chez ma cousine Évelyne.
To make a long story short, we worked with them for three months and only then, and not before, were we able to turn on the cameras. When they talked to us, it was as though the cameras were not there. We learned a lot during that time. Chez ma cousine Évelyne was able to take them in when they had hit rock bottom, felt defeated and had a millstone around their necks. Some people believe that all it takes is resolve and keeping one's head above water, but these people kept going under right away.
Seeing this reality was quite the experience for me. When these people hit bottom, there is no one there for them. They themselves acknowledge that they have alienated everyone. In some cases, we were able to ensure that the individual could die at Chez ma cousine Évelyne surrounded by family members, with whom they had managed to reconnect. Those were intensely human moments.
Because of this experience, I am saying yes to decriminalization. However, we need a way to achieve that. A very interesting report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction points out that legislative intervention, meaning decriminalization, is ultimately only one of the pillars of a comprehensive approach, which takes time and effort to implement. Portugal, for example, scaled up prevention, treatment and harm reduction services two years prior to decriminalization.
Implementation of a pan-Canadian strategy should therefore precede decriminalization to ensure that the federal government or other levels of government do not shirk their responsibility by arguing that those people are no longer in the legal system.
That is the main problem we see in this bill. It is also the reason we would like to improve it. We will reflect on this.
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