- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Courtenay—Alberni
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,159.67
- Government Page
- Oct/17/23 6:33:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad the member talked about an integrated approach because the Portuguese model is a coordinated, integrated, compassionate model. Here in Canada, we do not have coordination. There are no resources. In fact, we are in a health crisis.
I will say this: The Liberals' incremental approach costs lives in a health crisis. The disinformation from the Conservatives costs lives in a health crisis. What we need is action. We need a timeline to invest in harm reduction, treatment, recovery, prevention, education and a safer supply to replace the toxic street drugs.
Where is the plan? Where is the timeline? Where is the compassion? When is this going to be a priority? When are they truly going to end the stigma? Do I have to keep coming back here every week to fight the same fight? When is the plan going to be tabled in this House of Commons? The families deserve it.
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- Oct/17/23 6:25:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am here tonight on behalf of the 40,000 Canadian families that have lost loved ones since 2016, since the Liberals formed government, due to the toxic drug supply. I am here also on behalf of those living with problematic substance use and recreational substance use who are dying from preventable deaths.
Just to give some context, right now in Canada, about 180 Canadians per million die due to toxic drugs. In British Columbia, my home province, it is 430. In the Island Health region, it is over 500, and in the Alberni Valley, where I live, it is over 1,000. For those under the age of 49, it is right now over 2,100 people per million who are dying from toxic drugs. It is off the chart.
I have been asking, and New Democrats have been asking, for the federal government to come up with a plan, a timeline and resources to respond to this health emergency. In fact, not only has the Liberal government failed to do that, but it also has not spent even 1% of what it spent on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Why is that? It is because of the stigma. That is the only reason it has not responded. There are solutions out there.
I took it upon myself to go to Portugal last summer, on my own dime, to learn from Portugal, because it had six deaths per million. To paint the picture of how many people are dying in Canada, just to put things in perspective, more people have died in Canada from a toxic drug supply than in all of the European Union, with a population of over 450 million people.
The Portuguese story is quite interesting, because that country had a massive drug crisis that was claiming the lives of many people in the mid-nineties. Over 1,000 people were dying, primarily heroin users. There were 1,000 heroin users in a population of 10 million people. Just to put things in perspective, in my home province of British Columbia, we have 100,000 chronic substance users in a population of five million people. We have double what they had, in terms of per capita usage, of chronic substance users.
The Portuguese realized it was a health emergency and responded like it was a health emergency. They convened a table of experts. They decided to move forward with expert-based policy. They created treatment on demand and a safer supply of substances. They scaled up. They had 250 people on methadone at the start of their program, and they scaled that up to 35,000 in two years. They used the military to create labs, to lower the cost and to get supply out the door. Today, they have 20,000 chronic substance users. They focused on harm reduction, making sure that people got the support they did.
I will talk about the politicians and what they did. They were the heroes. They took the gloves off, stepped out of the way, stopped playing politics and got rid of their ideology. Portugal focused on evidence-based decision-making led by experts, and put forward a plan with resources, a timeline and a strategy. It was unbelievable.
We actually had an expert task force on substance use from Health Canada. What did the federal government do? It chose to ignore them. There is still no plan, no timeline and no resources. When is the government going to treat this as a true public health emergency? Where is the urgency?
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- May/31/23 3:22:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a year ago tomorrow, most of the Liberal caucus and all Conservatives teamed up to defeat Bill C-216 for a health-based approach to substance use. If it had passed, today we would have a multi-faceted plan to fight the toxic drug crisis, based on the recommendations of the government's own expert task force. Instead, thousands more families have lost loved ones because of poisoned drugs purchased on the street.
When will the government deliver a comprehensive plan to keep people who use drugs alive and provide no-fee, on-demand treatment for those who need help now?
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague who tabled this bill for bringing it forward and for recognizing that we must do more to support people dealing with substance use disorders.
As we know, Canada is experiencing multiple crises: a mental health crisis, a toxic drug crisis, a housing crisis and a worsening affordability crisis. There are links between these crises, and they are impacting the quality of life for Canadians in communities across the country. It is incumbent upon us, as parliamentarians, to present and debate solutions so we can move forward in the best interests of Canadians.
In developing possible solutions, I believe it is critical to listen to both experts and those with lived or living experience. Last year, I was honoured to be named the NDP critic for mental health and harm reduction. I promptly tabled Bill C-216, the health-based approach to substance use act. This bill was aligned with the recommendations of the expert task force on substance use that was commissioned by Health Canada to make recommendations on federal drug policy.
Earlier this year, as I travelled across the country to speak to Canadians about Bill C-216, I had the opportunity to meet with many individuals directly affected by the toxic drug crisis, either personally, through someone they love, or because they were working on the front lines. I consistently heard that we need more supports for people struggling with mental illness, trauma, problematic substance use and housing precarity.
I also heard that there is no silver bullet. We know these are complex issues that require multi-faceted solutions, such as investing in the social determinants of health like housing and income security, increasing the focus on prevention and early prevention, and making a full range of mental health and substance use supports available on demand.
While Canada is facing an intersecting crisis, we are not making adequate investments into urgently needed solutions. Relative to the disease burden caused by mental illness, and compared to some of our G7 peers, Canada is underspending on mental health. France spends 15% of its health care budget on mental health, whereas the U.K. spends 13%. By comparison, mental health spending makes up between 5% to 7% of health care budgets in Canada, depending on the province or territory, so underinvestment in prevention and evidence-based care has come at a tragic cost to our communities.
Canada has now lost more 30,000 lives since 2016 because of drug poisonings, in addition to more than 44,000 hospitalizations. This public health emergency has been escalating for seven years, yet the government has only committed $800 million to date for its substance use and addictions program. Meanwhile, the expert task force on substance use found that current ineffective policies are costing us billions every year in health care, policing and criminal justice expenses.
I appreciate the bill's intent. It seems to provide a route of access to treatment for those with substance use disorders and reduces the impacts of problematic substance use on individuals and their communities. However, I have some concerns about some of the assumptions that may have been made in formulating the bill, and I cited some of them earlier, as well as how it may play out in practice if passed.
In doing research and consultation on this bill, a theme that has come up consistently is that prisons are currently places of punishment and not care. The United Nations Nelson Mandela rules provide that the quality of health care provided to incarcerated persons must be equivalent to that available to the general population. However, concerns have long been raised about the quality of care in Canadian prisons and inherent conflicts that arise when correctional authorities are responsible for delivering health care.
Catherine Latimer, the executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, has explained this conflict as follows, “Whenever you have correctional authorities delivering health care, there’s going to be irreconcilable conflict between the institution and the health-care needs of the individual”. She continues, “Security issues will always trump the health needs of the individuals.”
Emilie Coyle, the executive director of the Canadian Association of the Elizabeth Fry Societies, echoed that perspective in conversation in my office and commented that, if we try to insert care into prisons, people will continue to be harmed by our overly punitive prison systems.
Today, my office spoke with an individual with lived experience of opioid use disorder and criminal justice involvement. This individual is now doing advocacy work in recovery and shared the perspective, “Prisons do not breed success.” Indeed, the shortcomings of mental health care in federal penitentiaries has been well documented, such as reports by the correctional investigator and the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Before establishing a regime of designated addictions treatment facilities in penitentiaries that will necessarily require significant investments, it is important to pause and ask: Where can someone get the best care? Where will they receive care that is evidence-based, trauma informed and culturally appropriate? Where are they most likely to achieve their treatment or recovery goals?
The answer we have heard consistently from those working with incarcerated individuals or with lived experience is that people are better served by accessing mental health and substance use care in their communities. Unfortunately, across Canada, there are barriers to accessing community-based mental health and substance use services, such as stigma, out-of-pocket costs, lengthy wait-lists, admission criteria and lack of detox facilities. Last year, the Expert Task Force on Substance Use recommended that the government make significant new investments to provide supports to people who use drugs, but that call has not been heeded, and the level of funding committed to date remains inadequate to meet the needs in communities across the country.
I welcome the opportunity to work with the member on initiatives that will remove barriers to substance use treatment and recovery services so that all Canadians can get the support they need in their communities. No one should have to go to jail to get help. That is just a fact.
I am also concerned that the bill may prevent people who want help from accessing it. In its current form, the bill proposes to exclude individuals convicted of certain offences, including drug trafficking offences, from its scope. This seems to ignore the fact that some individuals with substance use disorders become involved in subsistence trafficking. Exclusions in the bill could create barriers to accessing treatment in federal prisons.
Indeed, the individual with lived experience I spoke of earlier would not have benefited from the bill, having been convicted of trafficking. He was, fortunately, able to access treatment prior to sentencing and while in recovery, he has remained gainfully employed and involved in community service. After reviewing the bill, he asked how many people serving federal sentences might benefit from the bill, given the excluded offences. It is a good question, and a question that needs to be answered.
While I appreciate the bill's intent to create pathways to treatment, I think we must be careful to avoid introducing new barriers. We must also think about where we can make criminal justice reforms and investments in substance use services that will increase the likelihood of successful outcomes.
I really want to thank the member for prompting this debate. I look forward to further dialogue with my colleague and other colleagues in the House. We have to work together. This is a parallel crisis right now, which we have been dealing with throughout COVID, and the government has not paid enough attention to it. It has not acted with a sense of urgency. People's lives are at stake. This is impacting our communities, our health care system, penitentiaries, policing and the judicial system. Most of all, it is impacting people's lives and those of their families.
Again, I look forward to working with all members in the House to try to provide solutions so that we can tackle this crisis. It does require a sense of urgency and immediacy.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for trying to bring forward solutions to the crisis we are facing, the mental health care and substance use crisis the country is facing.
We know the United Nations' Nelson Mandela rules provide that the quality of health care provided to incarcerated persons must be equivalent to that available to the general population. That is not happening right now. That is clear.
I am also concerned, as my Liberal colleague was, about the fact that this bill might prevent people who want help from accessing it. In its current form right now, the bill proposes to exclude individuals convicted of certain offences, including drug trafficking offences, from its scope. This ignores individuals who have substance use disorders who become involved in substance trafficking.
Maybe my colleague could explain why they are excluded in the current form of this bill, because it excludes a lot of people who need help.
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- May/2/22 11:57:22 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, there are a couple of things in there.
First, the member talked about mental health. We heard a commitment from this government of $4.5 billion over five years in transfers around mental health. We did not see it in the fall economic statement. In fact, we did not see it in the budget, but we are eagerly anticipating it, given post-COVID or coming out of COVID when we have a serious mental health crisis as never before. We absolutely need to make sure that people get access to those supports.
When it comes to treatment, we need to make sure that it is on demand. Certain provinces do not want to do a safe supply: They do not want to decriminalize and they believe just in treatment as a model, but they are not delivering it. They should go to Edmonton and go to Saskatoon. I was just there. A gentleman I met had dreams and wanted treatment, but he said that it was going to take weeks or months to get treatment. We need to invest. It saves money, and I talked about some of that. We need to invest.
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- May/2/22 11:48:13 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, this is again the problem in the House. We have four official political parties and a fifth party, the Green Party, and what parties do not recognize is that when 27,000 people die in this country in six years, this issue should be addressed in the fall economic statement. In B.C. it has killed more people than COVID-19, yet COVID-19 responses are in this budget. Absolutely, this is a fall budget issue and it is missing in this document. It is missing in the funding and it is missing in the response from the government. I am disappointed to hear my colleague think that this issue should not be responded to in the fall economic update.
I am going to go back to my speech, if I can.
The second report says:
Current policies are currently costing Canada huge amounts. In 2017, the estimate of healthcare costs in Canada related to the use of opioids and other depressants and cocaine and other stimulants was one billion dollars, and the cost of policing and legal proceedings related to drug possession exceeded six billion dollars.
These are 2017 numbers. Yes, this is relevant to the fall economic statement.
The task force recommended providing sufficient and ongoing funding to address the issue and stated, “Although a significant initial investment will be required to reshape the system and address the drug toxicity crisis, costs can be expected to decrease over time as the impact of new, more effective policies is felt.”
That there are societal costs to problematic substance use is not news. In 2014, a report of the blue ribbon panel on crime reduction was prepared for the British Columbia provincial government. It states:
Clearly, substance abuse is an expensive societal issue. Drug treatment is also an expensive enterprise. This raises the immediate question as to whether treatment is worth the cost. According to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, “every dollar invested in addiction treatment programs yields a return of between $4 and $7 in reduced drug-related crime, criminal justice costs, and theft. When savings related to healthcare are included, total savings can exceed costs by a ratio of 12 to 1.”
This is an economic issue. This was an opportunity missed in the fall economic update. The report recommended that quality mental health and addiction services be made more accessible, finding that evidence suggests such investments would lead to significant future savings. It is an economic issue and should have been addressed in the fall economic statement.
Beyond these health and justice system costs, there are less visible costs to communities from the war on drugs. These costs are something I have heard a great deal about, as I have travelled the country to learn about the toxic drug supply crisis and speak about my private member's bill. I have been on a “stop the harm” tour, listening to people in Victoria, Duncan, Nanaimo, Edmonton last week, Saskatoon and Toronto. I was in Montreal today, in my colleague's home province, listening to frontline people. I hope he does the same, because they will tell him it is an economic issue as well as a human rights and health issue. In Halifax I hear the same thing.
I was talking to Jean-Francois Mary at Cactus Montreal today. He said that for someone who gets HIV, it costs $35,000 a year to get medicine. For someone with hepatitis C, it costs about $75,000. He says he gets $250,000 in funding from the province but does not get any federal funding. He is here to stop the spread of HIV and stop hepatitis C, so this is an economic issue.
I also heard this from Kayla DeMong at Prairie Harm Reduction. She said it does not make any economic sense that we are not investing in harm reduction. She just got her funding pulled from the Province of Saskatchewan. They need federal funding.
I could go on, but I will go right to the fact that we need empathy right now. We need to listen to the people. We need to open our hearts on this issue. It is an economic issue and it is a human issue as well.
I listened to Isabelle Fortier this morning, from Moms Stop the Harm. When I was at Dopamine in Montreal, she talked about her daughter Sara-Jane, who was studying law at the University of Ottawa. She got into a depression and started using substances to cope with it. She died 600 metres from a hospital from a preventable overdose. She wanted to volunteer at Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the Red Cross. She lost her dreams.
One thing I have seen from coast to coast to coast in the eyes of the people who are struggling the most with this crisis is that they have fear in common. They are scared. They are scared about where they are going to sleep. They are scared for what they are going to eat. They are scared that they are going to die of drug poisoning. They are scared that they are never going to be whole again, or be with their families, friends and loved ones. They are scared that their dreams are gone.
I am calling on all of us to have empathy. Gandhi said that, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” I am calling on us to be leaders and to show that we have courage, that we care about the most vulnerable, that we do not fail them and that we unlock their dreams. It is good for the GDP. We have an opportunity. We can look to Portugal, which took a health approach instead of a criminal approach. It is proud of taking on a complex issue with a complex solution. It had courage, it did not have fear, and it was good for the country's economy.
This is a fall economic update issue. It has been a fall economic update issue for six years. It has been a budget update issue for six years, with failed opportunities. I encourage us all to have the love, compassion and courage to make this issue a priority. All of us can dream to open up and unlock the dreams of the people who are dying right now by supporting them, by investing in them and by prioritizing them. We can do this, and I hope we will all do it and stop letting people die unnecessarily.
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moved that Bill C-216, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to enact the Expungement of Certain Drug-related Convictions Act and the National Strategy on Substance Use Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Madam Speaker, it is a huge honour to draw third in the order of precedence this Parliament to be able to move such an important piece of legislation. It is emotional for me because this is such an important bill. It is Bill C-216, a health-based approach to substance use act.
I want to thank my deputy House critic for the NDP from Port Moody—Coquitlam for seconding the bill. The bill is not new. It was originally moved by the member for Vancouver Kingsway in the 43rd Parliament, but it died on the Order Paper because of an unnecessary election.
Its time has come, and we cannot delay any more. We are using this as the third bill to debate in the House because lives are at stake. We know this from the same public health experts who asked us to follow the science at the beginning of the pandemic. We know this from provincial coroners' reports, which tell the story with statistical evidence of record-breaking numbers of overdose deaths in our cities, our towns and our rural communities.
We know the time has come to debate these measures when Canada's police chiefs and the municipal governments of our largest cities are supporting the decriminalization of the possession of illicit drugs for personal use and the provision of access to a safe, regulated supply of drugs for users.
We know the time has come from the families and loved ones of so many victims of drug poisoning and from the heartbreaking stories the media reports about their pain. Each of us in the House, every one of us, knows all too well the time has come for common sense reforms of Canada's drug laws because of the phone calls we receive from our constituents, from moms and dads, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours, about overdose deaths caused by drug poisoning. They tell us the time has come to act on the decriminalization of simple possession and for the provision of a safe, regulated supply of substances. They are all asking us to save lives.
As the former provincial medical health officer from my home province of British Columbia, Dr. Perry Kendall, said recently, the latest figures are “unconscionable” and “it is past time for an adult discussion about drug policy.” The bill is the healthiest approach to substance use, and the debate is about having that adult discussion, which has not taken place in the history of this House.
We know from the evidence that the so-called war on drugs has not worked over the past many decades. As the frontline workers fighting to save lives on the streets of our towns and cities remind us, it has not been so much a war on drugs, but it has been and continues to be a war on drug users.
The fact is that because a son, daughter, friend or neighbour is addicted to drugs, or is just a weekend user, should not be a death sentence, because too often it is. They are sentenced to death by drugs poisoned with fentanyl and other dangerous substances by organized crime seeking to maximize profits. In fact, fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Its orders of magnitude show it is cheaper to traffic than other drugs, which creates a huge economic incentive, at the cost of lives. A few grains of fentanyl can cause overdose and death.
I know there is support in this Parliament for the measures proposed in the bill from many members and from many parties, and I am grateful for that support. I am especially grateful for that of my own party, which has been behind this the whole way. We may not all agree on the same specific actions required, but we all want to stop the harm.
In 2020, Health Canada asked 18 experts in the field of substance use and addictions to come together as an expert task force on substance use and consider alternatives to criminal penalties for the simple possession of illicit drugs. The government promised it would be informed by this task force in its policy making going forward. In fact, it became a campaign promise. The expert task force was mindful of five core issues: stigma, disproportionate harms to populations experiencing structural inequity, harms from the illicit drug market, the financial burden on the health and criminal justice systems, and unaddressed underlying conditions.
In May 2021, we heard from these experts and were informed by their near-unanimous recommendations. Not surprisingly, their recommendations mirror the measures proposed in this bill today for a truly health-based approach to substance use. In the same way that we listen to the advice of public health professionals in dealing with COVID-19 and the pandemic, we must listen to these experts about the overdose crisis, which is killing increasing numbers of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
First, “the Task Force found that the criminalization of simple possession causes harms to Canadians and needs to end.” These are not my words. They come from this body of esteemed experts gathered together by the government to guide the actions intended to save lives. I am going to repeat that: “The Task Force found that criminalization of simple possession causes harms to Canadians and needs to end.” This is a human rights issue.
It has been more than 10 months, and hundreds and hundreds of deaths, since the City of Vancouver applied for section 56 decriminalization exemption with the support of its medical health officer and its chief of police. This is the exact same process Vancouver used to get the first supervised consumption site almost 20 years ago. The federal government of the day backed the City against provincial opposition, as the need was so dire. This took courage and political will. The need is more dire today. We all know this. However, for whatever reason, the Vancouver application, now joined by applications from British Columbia and the City of Toronto, sits on the minister's desk.
Second, the government was informed by its own expert task force that it recommends:
As part of decriminalization...criminal records from previous offenses related to simple possession be fully expunged. This should be complete deletion, automatic, and cost-free.
It is right in the report. This bill calls for full expungement of conviction for simple possession. It is time to relieve Canadians of this unnecessary burden. Why? Because those Canadians who are burdened with records of criminal conviction for simple possession of illicit substances face often insurmountable barriers to employment, housing, child custody and travel.
Third, this bill calls for a national plan: a strategy to expand access to harm reduction, treatment and recovery services across Canada. Importantly, this must include ensuring access to a regulated safe supply for users. Instead of leaving the drug supply to gangs driven to maximize profits at the expense of lives, we must support the domestic production and regulation of a safer supply that is readily available and accessible to users.
It has been almost two decades since the first sanctioned supervised consumption site opened. It has been another decade since the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it must remain open, yet there are still only a few dozen in the entire country. Why are there so few? Why is there such limited access for those who need the service? I submit that it is because of a continued stigma against and criminalization of drug users.
Unfortunately, as these common-sense reforms are advanced on a daily basis by public health professionals, law enforcement, the media, frontline workers, and substance users and their families, they have been given very little attention by the current government. It has been six years. The overdose crisis is not even mentioned in the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the Minister of Health, and is given a low priority in his letter to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. It was not even in the Speech from the Throne.
This crisis must be treated with urgency. It is a health emergency. Slow-walking essential reforms through a protracted political and bureaucratic deliberation, or worse, ignoring them altogether, will only result in more preventable deaths. We all want lives to be saved, so let us take the politics out of the overdose and toxic drug-supply crisis.
Indigenous people are disproportionately affected, and we must work with them in partnership on the implementation of a health-based approach. Frontline workers struggling day in and day out to save lives must also be partners in implementing a health-based approach. Public health professionals and law enforcement must be engaged along with territorial, provincial and municipal governments.
In summary, I ask that consideration be made of the three essential measures proposed in this bill.
First, that the stigma of substance use be addressed by repealing the provision in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that makes it an offence to personally possess certain substances.
Second, that barriers to employment, housing and other essentials of life be removed for Canadians with certain drug-related convictions through the destruction or removal of the judicial records of those convictions that are in federal systems.
Third, and finally, that a health-based approach to substance use be created through a national strategy on substance use act, which would require the Minister of Health to address the harm caused by problematic substance use. A national strategy should include, but not be limited by, access to a safe, regulated supply of substances for users, universal access to recovery, trauma-based treatment, harm reduction services, prevention programs, outreach and public awareness programs.
None of the above should cause this government to delay further the approval of applications by British Columbia, and the cities of Vancouver and Toronto, for section 56 decriminalization exemptions. Unfortunately, ministers and their officials continue to hem and haw about the differences between the applications as they pertain to the threshold of quantities that are possessed. This should not be an excuse for delaying our movement as a nation towards decriminalization.
Similarly, with the expansion of safe injection sites and the provision of safe drugs under existing laws, we cannot let this debate and the legislative and regulatory actions that must follow delay or defer providing access to a safe supply. Evidence shows that users are not dying from overdoses at safe injection sites, where they exist. In fact, there has not been a single overdose death in any of the safe injection sites in this country. Not one. There has not been a single overdose death. We learn from this that a regulated safer supply will save lives. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, this bill, which is a health-based approach to substance use, aims to save lives.
The Public Health Agency of Canada projects that we will lose at least another 3,000 Canadians just in the first half of this year alone. This is not just a statistic. It is a tragedy, this enormous loss of life. Of course, in the stories of the families who have just lost loved ones to illicit drug poisoning, we know from the evidence and from the advice of public health experts that these deaths could have been prevented.
Who are they? Seventy-five per cent of the deaths are men, with the majority of people between the ages of 20 and 49. Indigenous people are especially at high risk in our country. In B.C., my own province, first nations people died of an overdose at a rate 5.3 times that of other residents in 2020. Most are economically vulnerable. Only a quarter of the men, and a third of the women, had some level of employment. For those who were employed, most were concentrated in the trades and other physically demanding occupations that are also more prone to high rates of injury and unmanaged pain. These people are dying alone. In Ontario, 75% of fatal overdoses in 2021 occurred when no one was present to intervene. In B.C, 83% of overdose deaths occurred inside, and more than half were in private residences.
We know from the Public Health Agency of Canada that, without significant interventions, the rate of deaths and harms will worsen and altering the course of the overdose crisis will become even more challenging. Over the past six years, we have lost over 25,000 lives and Canada still does not have a strategy. We know from coroners' reports, frontline workers and users that people are dying from drugs that are, for the most part, poisoned with fentanyl and other chemicals to maximize the profits of organized crime.
Some people are addicted to illicit drugs, and many are not. They are occasional users seeking relief from the pain of past trauma or the challenges of everyday life. I know that some members will say the emphasis of our approach should be limited to providing treatment for addiction. While trauma-based treatment leading to recovery from an addiction is an important component of a health-based approach to substance use, we must stop the harm first. As the member for Vancouver East told the House last month, dead people don’t need treatment.
My thanks to all of my colleagues in the House for their consideration of this very important bill. I look forward to their comments, their ideas and their questions.
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