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Hon. Hedy Fry

Member of Parliament
Liberal

Vancouver Centre
British Columbia
Voting Attendance: 57%
Expenses Last Quarter: $106,078.52

Government Page

Feb/8/22 8:58:00 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I will start by saying that we actually opened up safe injection sites, safe consumption sites, across this country, which were blocked and stopped for 10 years by the Conservative government. That is the first thing we did. Second, we made naloxone available, which can immediately save someone who is dying of an overdose and prevent them from dying. We have been giving access to drugs to many provinces that have been able to accept it. The problem is that it is not reaching everyone. I talk all the time with colleagues of mine who are also physicians. They are telling me that the thing to do is to use what has been successful for 25 years in Europe, in Switzerland and Scandinavia, which is diacetylmorphine. It is an easy drug. I have told my colleagues in government, because we recently found out this is something that is easily done, to provide a substance use and addiction funding program to doctors, nurse practitioners and others to give this drug, in its inhalable form and its intravenous form, to people who need it. The SUAP grant funding will make it happen because right now in the province of British Columbia, it is not being allowed by the provincial government. My friends may say—

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Context: House Hansard - 26 - Feb/8/22

Hon. Hedy Fry

Feb/8/22 8:55:33 p.m.
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Madam Chair, decriminalization does have something to do with it. It removes the stigma. We are already moving forward with that as a federal government. We have asked attorneys general, federal and in every province, not to give criminal records to people who are using certain amounts. The City of Vancouver is willing to work on this. I am in support of it, but the thing that saves lives, which is what I am focusing on tonight, is safe supply. When we look at the evidence, yes, Portugal has had some success, but the greatest successes are occurring in Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries where they are using safe supply. We need to recognize how people use it. It is not being used intravenously anymore. It is being inhaled. We see all kinds of people using it. We need to move forward to save lives. Decriminalizing is important. It is one of the many tools that we have, but everyone is focusing on that and nobody is really talking about access to safe supply. The federal government has been giving access to safe supply and funding safe supply in every province that has asked for it. The thing we are talking about is how to make this inhalable drug available to 70% of users and how to ensure that we are using a tried and true for the past 25 years drug that has been shown not only to save lives but to get people into rehabilitation—

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Context: House Hansard - 26 - Feb/8/22

Hon. Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, Lib.)

Feb/8/22 8:48:58 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am so excited to participate in this debate. I think my colleague just said it all. We talk about a crisis. A crisis sounds like something existential. This is real. In my province of British Columbia, 6.5 people a day are dying from preventable deaths. This is a mental health issue. This is a mental health problem, and there is a way to deal with it. We can talk about decriminalization, and we can talk about a whole lot of other things. The only thing that would stop people dying from a toxic, illicit supply of illegal drugs is a safe supply of drugs. That is it. That is simple. Since 2015, we have heard from my colleague that our government has done a great number of things. We have expanded safe consumption sites, and we have been able to allow everyone to have naloxone readily available to them, for if they have an overdose. However, we have also learned some other things. Things have changed since this began. Now, 70% of street users inhale opioids. They are not using them intravenously any more. They are inhaling them. We need to deal with that. We are finding out that about 35% of people who are dying from an overdose are dying in private homes. About 50% are dying in social housing, in hotels and everywhere else. Only a small percentage of people are dying on the street. This mythical figure we have of some homeless person lying in the gutter using opioids is not true. Clear evidence tell us opioids are being used by professionals, families, people with children and middle-class persons. It is killing them. We need to stop it. I think our government has done a great deal. We have brought in naloxone, as I said. We have been able to increase the number of safe consumption sites, and we have been helping with field operations to deliver harm reduction in cities across the country. We have been doing all of this, but the number of people dying each day is increasing. I wanted to point out that, no matter what we have to say about safe consumption sites, in the most recent report from British Columbia there were no overdose deaths in safe consumption sites. Of these deaths, 55% were in hotels and single-room occupancy housing and social housing, and 35% were in private homes. Let us get this picture right. The majority of people who are dying from overdoses are men under the age of 39. These are people in the prime of their lives: productive Canadians whose lives have been lost. We have it in our power to prevent this, and what we need to do is go with a safe supply. We need to look at how we provide the right kind of safe supply, though. Right now, in Vancouver and in other places across the country, you can get intravenous drugs given to you in small clinics that do not reach everybody. However, if people are inhaling the drugs, we need to be able to look at using a drug that has been used for 25 years in Europe. It is called diacetylmorphine, or DAM. DAM has been used with success. People who are taking it are beginning to live productive lives. They are going to work, they are having families and they are doing normal things because they do not have to worry about dying. I think the most important question to ask is how do we get diacetylmorphine into the hands of the people in Canada who need it? One of the big things we found out is that the provinces are unwilling to do this. They are afraid. The political risk for them is too high, so we talk about decriminalization as if it is a magic bullet. It has nothing to do with anything. What I would like to suggest is that the federal government has it in its power to use the substance use and addictions program to deliver small amounts of money to pilot projects, driven by clinical practitioners in their practices, by physicians and nurse practitioners through telehealth, and by other ways of getting inhalable diacetylmorphine into the hands of people. It is simple. It is an easy thing to do, it is clinically proven and it is evidence-based. The outcomes are great in Europe, where they call it heroin-assisted treatment. Let us stop having ideology about this and stop moralizing about this. Let us save lives, people. We have it in our power to do so. If we allow for SUAP to be given to the clinicians and nurse practitioners who want to use it through telehealth and other ways of getting this out to real people, then we can save those lives.

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Member of Parliament

Hon. Hedy Fry