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Member of Parliament

Gord Johns

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • Courtenay—Alberni
  • British Columbia
  • Voting Attendance: 66%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $148,159.67

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 233 - Oct/17/23
Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)
  • 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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Context: House Hansard - 49 - Mar/30/22
Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)
  • Mar/30/22 6:53:45 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to again highlight the government's failure to address the poisoned drug supply in this country, which has cost 27,000 lives, and the government's inaction. The Minister of Mental Health and Addictions was at the Standing Committee on Health and said that decriminalizing heroin and other street drugs was no answer to preventing deaths. She also said that the legalization of marijuana did not stop users from buying on the black market and that decriminalization still meant people went to the street to get their drugs. I am going to speak a bit about how there is no silver bullet to tackling this crisis. It is going to take a multi-faceted approach, and decriminalization is a critical step. Saving lives, like I said, is going to take multiple actions. I agree that decriminalization alone will not be enough, but saving lives will require relieving drug users of the fear and shame of criminal behaviour. For many drug users, this is a necessary prerequisite to accessing a regulated safer supply or stepping forward for trauma-based treatment or help from health care providers. As long as users are living in the shadows of criminal behaviour and are afraid of losing their supply, their employment, their income, their freedom or their social relationships, the likelihood of them trusting essential harm reduction services is very low. That is a fact. We all need to understand that cherry-picking one or another public policy reform will simply not be enough. Responding to overdose deaths, which are epidemic in our country, requires a multi-faceted response with interlinked and complementary measures that will provide a safe, social environment for users. It cannot be either-or. We cannot say yes to safer supply and no to criminalization. It cannot be one or the other. It cannot be yes to treatment but no to a safer supply, or no to expungement of criminal convictions for simple possession. It cannot be that. The measures recommended by the government's expert task force on substance use are intended to work in concert. We can walk and chew gum here in this country. Accessing safe substances will save lives, but walking through the door of a government-sponsored safe injection site takes courage when the very act of using drugs is a criminal offence. Decriminalization will reduce barriers to accessing a regulated safer supply. Expungement of criminal records will help Canadians overcome the barriers to employment, housing and child custody created by criminalization. Universal access to trauma-based treatment will help many recover from the consequences of substance use and allow them to live lives free of the consequences of substance use. Decriminalization, providing a low-barrier regulated safer supply for users, expunging records of criminal conviction and providing universal access to treatment are all policies that must go hand in hand. A multi-faceted response is needed to a multi-faceted crisis in our society that is taking lives. I want to thank The Globe and Mail's editorial board, which outlined the failed policies of the government and the lack of priority in taking action to tackle this endemic, which is taking the lives of our daughters, sons, mothers, fathers and community members in this country. It says: ...in the House of Commons there is an NDP private member's bill, C-216, that proposes decriminalization, as well as a national strategy on substance use that includes “low-barrier access to a safe supply of medically regulated substances” and “universal access to recovery, treatment and harm reduction services for problematic substance use.” C-216 sits in the purgatory of second reading. How to change the course of a ruthless epidemic of overdose deaths is right there in front of all MPs. The pile of evidence, from too many deaths to the policies to save lives, is sitting right there. I hope the government will listen to that.
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