- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Courtenay—Alberni
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,159.67
- Government Page
- May/23/24 11:09:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, they are not willing to do it. This is the problem. In Lethbridge, they closed them. People are dying. In Alberta, since the UCP took power, the Conservatives in Alberta, the death rate has gone up 276% over five years, the worst increase in toxic drug deaths by far. For the vast majority of doctors in Alberta able to prescribe safer supply, they are subject to a $10,000-per-day fine if they are caught doing so. Frontline workers who supervise drug consumption and reverse overdoses without a provincial license are subject to the same fines. These penalties are deterring life-saving health care during a worsening overdose emergency.
Does the minister believe it is appropriate for Alberta to levy a $10,000-per-day fine against people providing life-saving first aid by operating the formal overdose protection sites while this province shuts them down?
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- May/23/24 11:03:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, regarding the decision to allow the recent amendment of B.C.'s decriminalization pilot and the rejection of the Toronto application, despite the fact that we have seen an 11% decrease in toxic drug deaths in British Columbia since March of 2023 and we have seen a 17% rise in toxic drug deaths in Alberta and a 23% rise in Saskatchewan, what analysis was done to ensure that the right to life, liberty and security of the person for people at risk of dying was adequately considered?
Also, will the minister agree that criminal law has not and will not end drug possession and the use of illicit substances?
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- May/9/24 12:36:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to rise today to speak about the leading health crisis, toxic drugs. Certainly in my own province, it is the leading cause of death for those under the age of 59.
This issue is not just close to me; it is close to everyone in my home province, and it is a terrible tragedy. Highly contaminated toxic drugs are raging across the country and killing people every single day. Over 20 people a day are dying. I can tell members personally, coming from Vancouver Island and my hometown, of the impact it has had on everybody in my community. Nobody where I live is untouched. I cannot count on two hands the number of my friends' kids who have died, never mind friends. It is a terrible tragedy that is happening, and we can do better.
We hear this huge debate about harm reduction versus treatment and recovery. However, we have to do both; they go hand in hand. We cannot help people who are dead, as my good friend from Vancouver East constantly reminds me. We need to move forward with policies that are grounded on evidence or evidence-generated and supported policy.
The evidence says that what we are doing is not working. That is the evidence right across this country. We are now dealing with new substances that are highly toxic and addictive. Never before in our history have we seen such challenging times when it comes to dangerous substances. They are obviously lethal, because they are unregulated; they are manufactured, marketed and sold by organized crime.
We have had a number of expert reports on how we should respond to this crisis, including from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Expert Task Force on Substance Use, which was created by Health Canada to inform politicians on how to move forward in responding to this terrible crisis. All of them are consistent in that we need to stop criminalizing people who use substances, as it causes more harm and is rooted in stigma. We need to create a safer supply of substances to replace the toxic street supply. We need to scale up treatment and recovery; to make sure that we are meeting people where they are, with those systems in place and ready; and to spend money on education and prevention. However, we have not done that, and I say this all the time: The Liberals are taking an incremental approach in a health crisis, which is costing lives. Conservatives are spreading disinformation, which is deadly in a health crisis. We need to move forward and listen to the experts.
I will talk a bit about what is actually happening and the facts about some of the concerns we are hearing from the Conservatives. It is their motion today, and I will speak to them primarily.
The Conservatives have created a moral panic. They are fundraising off the tragedies of families. It is absolutely unbelievable. It is so harmful. If they were truly here to try to help people, they would be bringing forward concrete solutions. However, I have not heard that from any of their speeches today.
I asked the leader of the official opposition why he would not meet with the mothers of the victims of this crisis. I sat with them and listened to them, and their stories are informed. They know better than anyone how toxic the drugs are. They know how hard it is to support someone who is going through difficult challenges when living with a substance use disorder and navigating a system that is completely broken. They know better.
We hear the Conservatives in terms of their moral panic that they have created around this issue. I will talk a little about what is actually going on in western Canada, where we are hearing primarily from Conservative MPs.
Is my home province of British Columbia doing enough? No, it is absolutely not.
Is any province or territory in this country doing enough? No, but they require a federal partner. Vancouver, British Columbia, has been ground zero for over 100 years when it comes to high amounts of substance use. It dates back to the opioid crisis in 1908. This is not new to us in our communities, but what is new is the toxicity of the drugs. It has been challenging because we have been at ground zero facing this terrible tragedy.
When the B.C. Liberals were in government, in 2014, we went from 7.9 deaths per 100,000 people to 30.3 in just a matter of four years, a 383% increase. From 2017, we actually went up from 30.3 per 100,000, peaking at over 47 deaths per 100,000. That is absolutely brutal. After the last 11 or 12 months, we have seen an 11% decline in deaths. That is the trajectory right now for British Columbia. I am not celebrating that, but it is a relief.
This is a tragedy. Every death is preventable. Every single one of these deaths is preventable. We are breathing a sigh of relief that we are heading in the right trajectory, but it needs to go down much faster. We need to come together and work together on that. We went from 7.4 people dying a day in my own province to 6.2. Six families are going to get a call today.
I look at Alberta. The Conservative government got elected in 2019. Alberta had 15 deaths per 100,000 people; now it is at 41 deaths per 100,000. Alberta is leading the country in terms of deaths per capita. Alberta's death rate is skyrocketing. I will give some examples. In Lethbridge, which closed the safe consumption site, the death rate is 137 per 100,000. That is more than triple that of British Columbia. Medicine Hat is at 63.7 deaths, over 50% more than British Columbia. We see reports in the news about Fort McMurray having a record-breaking year. If we do not have safe consumption sites, then guess where people will go to use. They will use in public, in the back alleys and in the bathrooms of businesses, and they die at home, alone. We know that is deadly, when we have a toxic drug problem.
I could speak about Saskatchewan. We constantly hear from members, whether they be the member for Lethbridge or the member for Fort McMurray, pointing a finger at British Columbia. I am not doing that right now. I am just trying to bring some facts so that we can actually have a proper conversation. I will get to that.
In terms of Regina, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has pointed a finger at British Columbia, instead of coming here to fight to help people in Regina. That is a failure, while people are dying in his community. The death rate in his city is 66 per 100,000. That is straight from the Regina police force.
Those two Conservative provinces are leading the nation in terms of death rates that are skyrocketing. We could look to Alaska, a Republican state, which had a 45% increase last year. There is no harm reduction, no safe supply, no decriminalization in those two provinces and that state. When members want to point fingers at safe supply and decriminalization, what is happening in their provinces, with their one-track, recovery-only model, where they failed to listen to the experts? They talk about wacko. What is wacko is when people ignore experts, ignore evidence, ignore science and ignore the facts. That is wacko.
In the U.S., under Donald Trump, toxic drugs deaths doubled in 30 states, but they want to say it is British Columbia, an NDP thing or a Liberal thing. This is not an NDP, Liberal or Conservative thing. This is a societal issue. The problems and the solutions are not going to be based on ideology. They have to be grounded in evidence and supported by the experts, and led by the experts, not by politicians. I cannot think of another health crisis where politicians are deciding how we move forward.
This is an issue that we know has been chronically underfunded. The Liberals have spent less than 1% responding to the toxic drug crisis. Why? It is because of the stigma. Are the Conservatives helping contribute to the stigma? Absolutely. We need to get away from that harm. We need to make sure that we listen to the experts.
Now, we talk about safer supply. The whole concept of safer supply is that it is to be brought in to replace the toxic drug supply. This is recommended by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. The law and order party does not want to listen to the police. The police testified at the health committee. They said that 85% of poison drug deaths are from fentanyl. Cocaine was found in the bloodstream. However, they said hydromorphone, safer supply, is not what is killing people. In fact, traces of it showed up in 3% of the analyses of toxic drugs in British Columbia.
Prescribing pharmaceutical alternatives to toxic street drugs separates people from toxic street drugs and helps them stay alive so they can stabilize their lives and connect to treatment and care. There is no way to know the source of drugs purchased on the streets right now, even if a dealer claims it is from the prescribed alternatives program.
The chief coroner of B.C. has indicated that we are not seeing an increase in deaths amongst youth or an increase in diagnosis of opioid use disorder, despite the claims of the Conservatives. The goal of the prescribed alternatives program is to help people at the highest risk of death or harms from the illicit poison drug supply stabilize their lives.
Safer supply has not increased the number of people with opioid disorder. In fact, we have seen reductions in all-cause mortality and overdose mortality; reductions in overdose and in the use of unregulated opioids by those on safer supply; a decline in health care costs and fewer hospital visits; an increased engagement in health care and social services; improvements in physical and mental health; improvements in social well-being and stability; reduced use of toxic drugs from the unregulated street supply; improved control over their drug use; reduced injection; reduced involvement in criminal activities. The diversion of hydromorphone is not contributing to opioid-related mortality. In fact, we heard that for those receiving safer supply through the safer supply program, the risk of dying from any of those causes was reduced by 61%, and the risk of dying from overdose was cut in half. If they received four days or more, their overdose risk was further reduced by 89%.
I want to go back to who is impacted the most. Indigenous peoples are impacted the most. The opioid epidemic and toxic drug crisis are yet another example of the large gaps in health care outcomes between indigenous and non-indigenous people. Indigenous people are disproportionately affected and multiple times more likely to die from toxic drugs. They are seven times more likely to die in Alberta, five times more likely to die in British Columbia, and in some indigenous communities that can skyrocket to as much as 36 times more likely than the general population. We just heard that at the health committee the other day.
I am going to read a quote from Dr. Judith Sayers, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council president. She sits on the BC First Nations Justice Council. She said:
We want to work with the province in tackling the crisis and be part of a collaborative strategy.... The BCFNJC stands with our partners in healthcare and asserts that the toxic drug crisis needs to be treated and addressed as a public health issue, not a criminal justice issue. The criminal justice system is not the solution to a problem that, instead, needs to be addressed through healing.
We have to stop this colonial approach and listen to indigenous people, who are more likely to die from this crisis.
I have a quote from the police, which, again, the law and order party wants to ignore. The deputy commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said:
As noted, in some of our supervised consumption sites or overdose prevention sites, there are no inhalation rooms or there is no ability to inhale. We find that most of our overdose deaths are related to fentanyl and to inhalation, so we need to provide spaces, I think, that would allow for that, but it can't be a space where someone has to take a bus for four kilometres and go across the city to find that space. Those spaces need to be readily available.
This is against the Lethbridge model.
I will talk about Fiona Wilson, president of the British Columbia Association of Chiefs of Police. She is a deputy chief in the Vancouver Police Department. She said, “85% of overdose deaths are attributable to fentanyl.... [T]hat's what people are dying from according to the coroner's data. They're not dying from diverted safe supply and they're not actually dying from diverted prescription medication”. She also said, “the reality is that there are seven people per day dying in British Columbia as a result of the toxic drug crisis. They are not dying as a result of prescription-diverted medication; they are dying because of the poisonous drug supply that is on our streets.” Lastly, she said, “we do not want to criminalize people by virtue of their personal drug use. Those days are gone. We want to support a health-led approach.... [W]e strongly support the notion of not trying to arrest ourselves out of this crisis. That is not going to save lives. In fact, it does quite a bit of harm”. That is from the police.
I will talk about going to Portugal. I went to Portugal last summer, on my own dime, and I was very fortunate to have the Embassy of Portugal line up a deep-dive itinerary so I could go there and learn.
Why did I choose to go to Portugal? My good colleague from the Bloc talked about Portugal, and I really appreciate his insight. I went there to learn from them. They had a death rate of over 1,000 people in a population of only 10 million, primarily from intravenous drug use. Heroin, as we know, was impacting their community. They had over 100,000 chronic daily heroin users. As my colleague cited, over a million people had tried heroin. They were able to bring their numbers down to 23,000 chronic users. They brought the number of deaths from 1,000 to 60.
I thought it would be prudent for me to go and learn and listen to them. This is how they responded to their health emergency when they decided to treat it as that, instead of a criminal issue. They went from 250 people using methadone to 35,000 in two years. How did they do that? They engaged the military to build labs. They engaged the military to do that so they could reduce the price, get those labs up and running, and save lives. That is how one responds in a health emergency. They built treatment facilities right across the country so that there was no wait, no barrier to treatment, and it was covered under the universal health care system, not like the Alberta model. Good luck getting treatment in Alberta in a short period of time. It is not going to happen.
We heard loud and clear from witnesses, including Petra Schulz from Moms Stop the Harm, who talked about the gaps in the system, and there are gaps in our system.
Portugal also spent a lot of money on recovery, because we know that relapse is part of dealing with recovery. They caught people when they landed. They invested in a four-year follow-up cycle, when people came through treatment. We know that connection is a deep and important part of dealing with the underlying trauma. They made sure that people had housing, and they decriminalized drug use and treated it as a health issue.
One hears my title as the NDP critic for mental health and harm reduction. We do not just see harm reduction as safe consumption sites and safe supply. Those are critical components. However, housing and all the different social determinants of health are also reducing harm. Our goal should be to reduce harm.
We hear the Liberals talk about meeting the moment. They did not respond like Portugal. They have not moved in an expedient way. We need a coordinated, integrated, compassionate approach like that of Portugal.
Portugal created an expert task force. That expert task force morphed into the oversight body for government to move forward. I will tell members why the politicians in Portugal were heroes: They got out of the way. They decided it was a health issue and they let the experts lead. They moved forward with their policy and implemented it. The politicians' role was to make sure that they had the resources to do it. That was the job of the politicians.
We are not doing that today. We need to get to that point, because we know that over 20 people are going to die today. Over 20 moms are going to get a call. It needs to stop. The disinformation, the fundraising, the moral panic need to stop. People need to meet with the moms. The Conservative leader is the only leader who refuses to meet with Moms Stop the Harm. He cannot explain himself. They are informed.
The Liberal government needs to treat this and to meet the moment, like it says. It needs to scale up resources and meet the moment.
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- May/1/24 2:55:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the last year, deaths related to the toxic drug crisis are up 17% in Alberta and 23% in Saskatchewan. Every toxic overdose death is preventable, but in provinces with Conservative premiers that do not have safe supply or decriminalization and do not believe in harm reduction, deaths are soaring. Alberta is on a trajectory to have the most toxic drug deaths per capita in Canada by June.
Treatment, recovery and harm reduction go hand in hand. Will the Liberals finally make sure that all Canadians whose lives could be saved have access to these life-saving supports?
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- Apr/9/24 11:04:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the motion, it calls this a “carbon tax emergency”. We know the PBO and the Governor of the Bank of Canada have said that the carbon tax has about a 0.15% impact on inflation. It is about 15¢ on a $100 bag of groceries. The real emergency is the corporate greed emergency that is happening, the runaway corporate greed, but that is not being dealt with.
We keep hearing the word “emergency”. We saw the Liberals host a summit on auto theft. That is not an emergency; it is a serious issue. An emergency is the 42,000 people who have died from a toxic overdose. The government still has not convened a meeting with first ministers to deal with that. It is the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 19 and 59 in my home province of British Columbia. It is spreading across the country. There are skyrocketing deaths in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. However, the government has not even convened a summit on this crisis.
When will the government convene first ministers to deal with the health emergency? We have lost as many people as we did to COVID-19. The government spent less than 1% in response to the toxic drug overdose crisis than it did to COVID-19. When will it do that?
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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/30/23 10:10:27 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to table this petition today on behalf of moms, family members and loved ones of those who have died from a toxic, poisoned drug supply. This has become one of the most deadly public health emergencies of our lifetime, with approximately 21 deaths a day and a death toll of over 35,000 people in the last six years. This toxic drug crisis rages.
The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to declare the overdose crisis a national public health emergency. It is timely, because one year ago this week, the House defeated a bill that called on the government to take steps to end overdose deaths and overdoses injuries.
The petitioners call on the government to immediately collaborate with the provinces and territories to develop a comprehensive, pan-Canadian overdose action plan. They want to ensure that any plan considers reforms that other countries have used, including ensuring there is a safer supply of substances, stopping the criminalization of people who use substances and changing flawed drug policy and policing. They want to ensure this emergency is taken seriously with adequately funded programming and supports that will save lives.
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- Oct/19/22 8:06:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this spring, the government had a chance to listen to the experts and act on the toxic drug crisis that is taking a tragic toll on our communities every day. In my riding, in the small community of Port Alberni in the Alberni Valley with just over 30,000 people, we lost 20 people in just the first eight months of this year due to the toxic drug supply. These deaths were preventable and each person lost has loved ones who are left to deal with that grief in the face of government failure. That is four times the national average.
Across the country, we lost over 7,500 lives just last year. Shamefully, we have lost more than 30,000 lives since 2016. I heard the question from people who have been impacted by this crisis. They ask, “How many lives is it going to take before there is real action?” I worry that those with the power to bring change are becoming numb to these numbers. We must never lose sight of the fact that these numbers represent children, siblings, parents, partners, friends and neighbours.
The day this House rose for the summer, the Public Health Agency of Canada released modelling, forecasting, that the toxic drug crisis would continue its tragic path and possibly even worsen over the rest of the year. The agency predicted that we might lose as many as 2,400 Canadians per quarter. These are real lives. While we all returned to our communities for three months this summer, more than 2,000 families were planning funerals that did not need to happen.
They did not need to happen because last year Health Canada's expert task force on substance use made clear recommendations on how to respond to this crisis. Those recommendations included stopping the criminalization of people who use drugs, making significant new investments in supports for people who use drugs and who are in recovery, and expanding safer supply.
Our bill, Bill C-216, a health-based approach to substance use, reflected the paradigm shift the expert task force called for to stop the harm in our communities. However, instead of listening to its own task force, the Liberal government teamed up with the Conservatives to vote down Bill C-216. In the face of a public health emergency that has been worsening for years, the Liberal government is choosing an ineffective piecemeal response because of stigma and politics.
Every day, the government has an opportunity to make a different choice. By granting B.C.'s decriminalization request, the government has acknowledged the harms of criminalizing people who use drugs, yet it continues to allow these harms in every other province and territory in this country.
The Minister of Mental Health and Addictions has acknowledged that funding for the substance use and addictions program is not enough to meet the demand, but the government will not put enough money on the table to ensure people can get help when they need it. The minister has acknowledged the critical role that a safer supply must play in addressing this crisis, but the government remains focused on small-scale pilot projects rather than procuring a safer supply that could save lives across the country.
When will the government finally act like this is a life-or-death matter for thousands of Canadians each day and mount an urgent national response? When?
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- May/19/22 7:43:36 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the government says it is taking action while more people are dying. The deaths are mounting. It is not taking action in the way it needs to, like it did with COVID-19.
I will change my line of questioning to the minister.
As caregivers for children under five eagerly await a decision from Health Canada on Moderna's application for vaccines for this age group, how quickly will doses be distributed to the provinces upon approval?
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- Apr/6/22 3:38:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to table a petition today related to the toxic drug supply and the 27,000 deaths that are mounting in this country because of the lack of action.
The petitioners specifically call upon the Government of Canada to declare the overdose crisis a national public health emergency. They call on the government to take steps to end the overdose deaths due to a poisoned drug supply, and they want the government to immediately collaborate with the provinces and territories to develop a comprehensive strategy and action plan to address this crisis. They want that plan to ensure there is regulation of drugs and ensure we have a safe supply. They also want decriminalization for personal use and changes to flawed drug policy and policing. This emergency should be taken serious with adequately funded programs and supports.
This is the eve of a budget. I am honoured to table this petition today.
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