SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Caucus Chair

Alistair MacGregor

  • Member of Parliament
  • Caucus Chair
  • NDP
  • Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
  • British Columbia
  • Voting Attendance: 66%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 200 - May/18/23
Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)
  • May/18/23 1:17:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, where I disagree with the Conservatives on this issue is that I personally believe, backed up by evidence in the field, that safe supply and safe consumption have to work in conjunction with treatment and recovery programs. They are part of a continuum of care. We have to meet patients where they are at. Where I do agree with the Conservatives, though, is with their sense of frustration. That is very real. The situation is not getting better. The numbers on the ground are a stark reminder of how the government has failed to step up to the plate. Numerous people who are working on the streets, trying to combat this situation, have repeatedly asked the government to step up, commit the funding and commit the resources necessary to fight this epidemic on par with COVID-19 and with the AIDS crisis. That is the criticism that is being levelled at the government today. Why has it not stepped up and, at the very least, declared this a national health emergency?
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Context: House Hansard - 76 - May/20/22
Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)
Madam Speaker, this is a difficult conversation to have regarding Bill C-216 because of the context that we are debating it in. When I was approaching my speech today and what I was going to say about the bill, my first thoughts were about the incredible number of families that have been touched by this in a most profound way by having lost sons, brothers, fathers, sisters and cousins. It has left a trail of carnage in its wake. In my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, many communities have been severely affected. What is really stark is when we look at the statistics. Yesterday, we lost 20 people to this. Today, we are going to lose another 20, and tomorrow another 20. On it will go. British Columbia, my home province, has been the epicentre of this. In the first three months of this year alone, 548 people died. That is the nature of the street supply of drugs in so many communities across this country. We are just having too many families experience this, and it has been going on for years now. I have been a member of the House since 2015. It was in 2016 that my home province of B.C. declared a provincial health emergency. It seems that every single year that I have been in the House, we have been having the same conversation and publicly lamenting the sheer number of deaths, but we still have not figured out to put in place legislative policy to address it. Here we are in the year 2022, and we are still talking about this. In the past six years, nearly 25,000 Canadians have died. When does the number reach a point where we become ashamed of the lack of progress that we have made? We are in a legislative chamber. As part of the Parliament of Canada, we can enact the policy to save lives. It is this House that has jurisdiction over the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is this House that can legislate the Criminal Code. It is the government that, through federal powers, can help coordinate a strategy to effectively deal with this crisis, but we are still talking about it. Yes, I admit some action has been taken, but the numbers show not nearly enough. The problem is that the drugs fentanyl and carfentanil, synthetic opioids, have completely changed the game on the ground. We now have a situation, when people go out to buy street drugs, in which it is essentially like playing Russian roulette with their lives. In my riding, I do not have to walk very far down the streets to find illicit drugs. In fact, I could probably purchase illicit drugs more quickly than I could get a prescription filled out. That is how easy it is. When we combine that with the personal trauma that people have suffered, whether physical, emotional or sexual, the multitude of reasons that people use drugs is very wide-ranging. The fact is that it is still there, and every single day communities such as mine still see paramedics responding to this. They are still bringing out the naloxone kits, trying in vain to revive another life. Even if that person is lucky enough to be revived, they could be suffering from permanent brain injury and be a ward of our health care system for the remainder of their lives. This is where we are at, and we have to keep those people in our hearts when we are talking about this issue. I was reading in the news from B.C. earlier this month that toxicology testing revealed that 94% of the drug samples in March contained fentanyl or one of its analogs. That is not even Russian roulette anymore. That is actually a guarantee, pretty much, at 94%. People know that if they are going out to buy street drugs, the chance that they have a dose that is going to kill them remains very high. I serve in our caucus as the public safety critic, and one of my colleagues was referencing a committee study that we did on guns and gang violence. I want to echo his comments, because many of the police officers who appeared before our committee were talking about how the issues of gun violence and the illicit drug trade are so intertwined because of the obscene amounts of money that criminal networks are making with fentanyl and carfentanil. The street value of those drugs, when they are cut into other substances, has made this a very lucrative market. When that kind of money can be made on the streets, it always leads to conflict, and police officers across the country now tell us that whenever they go on a drug bust, they are almost always finding a massive arsenal of weapons to accompany it. The two cannot be separated from each other. I posed a question on this to the chief of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Chief Evan Bray. For his organization, he said: The position on decriminalization with regard to simple possession is trying to understand that putting handcuffs on someone who suffers with an addiction is not going to solve the problems. It's going to temporarily take them out of the stream, but that's all it's going to do. Unless there's a way we can get them the help they need, recidivism is going to happen and they're going to be back in that stream. That is a summary of the failure of the criminal approach. Having set the context, let us turn our attention now to Bill C-216, which was introduced by my friend, neighbour and colleague, the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni. I want to recognize that other members of our caucus, such as the member for Vancouver Kingsway, have also tried to spearhead legislation in other Parliaments. I also want to recognize the NDP leader, the member for Burnaby South, because it was back in 2017, during his leadership run for our party, that he first took this very bold policy position. We are now at a point, five years later, where we are actually having a serious conversation about this. Back in 2017, it was a risky position for him to take, and I want to acknowledge his courage in doing that so we could have this conversation today. Bill C-216 would do three main things. It would repeal the personal possession offence in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, something that I believe is necessary to end the criminal stigma attached to possession. It would, as a second part, expunge certain drug-related convictions. The third part, which is of course the really important one, is the enactment of a national strategy on substance use. I have heard conversations in the House about how we need to focus on treatment. I agree. Treatment is one part of the continuum of care. However, when that subject is brought up, I always respond by saying that we cannot treat a dead person. All of these measures have to brought into play together. There is no one silver bullet. It is all part of a continuum of care. It is a fact, having spoken to experts on the ground in my riding, that there are people out there who are not yet ready for treatment, and if we were to put them in a treatment program, it would be a complete and total failure because they are not yet at that stage. There are multiple interventions that need to happen in this, but one of the most important ones is to decriminalize, because we have too many people who, through the fear of criminality, are using alone and dying alone. They are doing so with no member of their family or their friends ever knowing that they were a drug user because they are ashamed to admit it. That is what the stigma does to people. It prevents people from getting the help they need. This bill comes out of a very clear recommendation from Health Canada's expert task force, but I want to end on this. I implore members of the House and other parties still trying to figure out how they are going to vote on this to please not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Please acknowledge that this is a good idea and that it is worthy of more study. Please vote on June 1 to get this bill to committee so that we can have a wholesome discussion on it and can pave a path forward to get people the real help they need and to save lives.
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