- Member of Parliament
- Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
- NDP
- Vancouver Kingsway
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 58%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $153,893.57
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague spoke in his speech about the overdose drug crisis in this country. In 2010, I was part of the public safety committee that toured this country and studied the provision of mental health and addiction services in Canada's federal prison system. At that time, we came out with a number of recommendations to the Harper government, which included a number of positive things, none of which were brought in by the Harper government. Instead, the Harper government closed the Kingston farms, closed industrial training programs for prisoners and did not implement a single harm reduction measure in Canada's federal prison system.
It appears the modern Conservative Party has had a conversion on the road to Damascus and is now talking about progressive policy. Does the member agree with the NDP that it is time we gave access to timely treatment for anybody who wants treatment for substance abuse or addiction through Canada's public health care system? Does he agree that addiction is a health issue and it warrants access to treatment through our public health care system, like every other disease and affliction?
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Madam Speaker, I certainly meant no disrespect.
Does the hon. member believe that we can interdict our way out of this problem? What does she think about the prospect of trying a new approach, other than the failed war on drugs, to try to make sure that people can at least get the drugs they are addicted to from a pharmacy or some other place where they can be assured that the quality of the drugs they are getting will not kill them?
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Madam Speaker, one thing we could all agree on in this place is that the tragedy of the opioid overdose crisis is something that is of concern to everybody.
I would point out, though, that opioid overdose deaths did not begin in 2015. I represent Vancouver Kingsway, and in the Lower Mainland thousands of people died of the opioid overdose crisis before that. I would posit that one of the reasons, if we talked to the families of people who died, is that most of these people were getting their drugs from organized crime, which does not care at all about the drugs being sold. They are buying tainted, dangerous drugs on the street from organized crime, and this is the cause of their immediate death.
I am just wondering. What would my hon. colleague say to that? Does she think that we could interdict our way out of that?
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Madam Speaker, of course the NDP thinks it is a good idea, as I do, that this bill pass. The CBSA is the only major law enforcement agency in Canada without an independent review mechanism to oversee the bulk of its activity. That is an oversight that needs to be changed.
I was interested in my friend's comments about interdiction at the borders, and I have done a bit of research. The port of Vancouver alone, with its four terminals, has 1.5 million containers coming every year. CBSA examines only 50,000 of them. That is about 4%. That means 1,450,000 containers pass through just that one port every year that are not examined by CBSA. The average container ship carries 10,000 containers. If 4% are examined, that means some 9,600 containers per ship are not searched.
Therefore, I am just wondering about the member's party's promotion of interdiction as a preferred method of dealing with guns or drugs. Would he not agree with us that there is just no way the CBSA is ever going to have an effective interdiction policy with figures like those?
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- Jun/14/22 3:36:05 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I guess what I am struggling with is there seems to be a relatively straightforward connection and a couple of principles that underpin this bill. One of them is that we have a very high percentage of people locked up in our country who are suffering from mental health or addiction problems. In fact, when I was the public safety critic for the official opposition and toured Canada's correctional institutions, that number was 70%. The second thing is that mandatory minimums operate on the principle that if we just lock people up for a longer time, the problem will be solved.
I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that. Does he believe that locking up people who are suffering from addiction or mental health issues will actually help integrate them into society or reduce recidivism, or does he agree with me that we need a better approach to actually help these people deal with their fundamental problems so that when they come out, they do not reoffend?
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill.
By way of introduction, it is important to note that this bill was reintroduced from the 43rd Parliament. It is an almost identical copy, with no changes except for the omission of coordinating amendments, which made some changes to the Firearms Act and adjusted some penalties for firearms offences. The reason I point out that it has been reintroduced is that this shows how slowly sometimes very important legislation moves in this place. That is particularly regrettable when we see the profound impacts that this legislation has on communities and people in this country.
Bill C-5 is the result of the justice minister's 2021 mandate letter, in which he was instructed to “introduce legislation and make investments that take action to address systemic inequities in the criminal justice system, including to promote enhanced use of pre- and post-charge diversion and to better enable courts to impose sentences appropriate to the circumstances of individual cases.” This bill responds to that, in part, and it does so by proposing to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offences. It would also remove mandatory minimums for some tobacco and firearms offences. It is important to note that all of these mandatory minimums were added by the Conservatives in their Safe Streets and Communities Act, Bill C-10, in 2011. This bill would also make conditional sentencing orders more widely available by removing the prohibition of using them for more serious offences, and it would make it possible for police and prosecutors to divert more drug cases from the courts.
This bill raises fundamental questions of effective criminal justice in Canada. It is fair to say that all parliamentarians across party lines share a number of goals in this area. We all want to see reduced crime, and we all want to keep people safe. We all want to protect victims, and we recognize that there is much more work to do in that area. We all want to reduce recidivism and make sure that in our criminal justice system, when people transgress and are part of the system, they come out and hopefully do not reoffend. Finally, we all want to address the root causes of crime.
I will pause for a moment and speak about the root causes of crime.
I was part of the public safety committee back in 2009 and 2010, when it conducted a study of mental health and addictions in the federal corrections system. In conducting that study, we toured federal corrections facilities across the country and went into federal penitentiaries to meet a wide variety of stakeholders. Among other facilities, we went into the Kent, Mountain and Pacific institutions in British Columbia. We went into an aboriginal healing lodge in British Columbia, as well as Ferndale. We went to an aboriginal women's corrections facility in Saskatchewan called Okimaw Ohci. We went to Kingston, an infamous Canadian federal penitentiary that is now closed. We went to Dorchester in New Brunswick and Archambault in Quebec. We also, by the way, went to the U.K. and Norway and toured institutions in those countries as well, to get a comparative example.
We talked to everybody in these institutions. We talked to offenders, guards, wardens, nurses, chaplains, families, anybody who had anything whatsoever to do with working inside a federal institution. What is burned into my brain to this day is a shocking number, which is that across all institutions in Canada, the common number we heard was that 70% of offenders in federal institutions suffer from an addiction or a mental health issue. Probingly, we asked everybody, including the guards and wardens, what percentage of those people they thought would not be in prison but for their mental health issues or addictions. The answer we got, again reliably and consistently, was 70%. What that told us was that we are not, by and large, locking up criminals or bad people. We are locking up people with mental health issues and addictions, and most of their crimes are related to those two issues.
I think it is important to pause for a moment and talk about social determinants of crime, because there are highly correlated factors, like poverty, marginalization, childhood trauma and abuse, and others, that go into that prison population. By and large, I did not see a lot of white-collar millionaires in a single one of those institutions. What I saw were a lot of poor, indigenous, racialized, addicted and mentally ill Canadians.
The other thing I think we need to talk about, when we talk about root causes, is how well Canada's justice system and our federal corrections institutions respond to that. At that time, the answer was “not very well”, and worse. At that time, the Conservatives did something that I consider to be politically worthy of condemnation, which is that they politicized the issue of crime for political gain. They pursued a tough-on-crime agenda, because they thought that by preying on people's fears and sense of victimhood, they could gain political points, and they used prisoners and the prison system as pawns in that regard. By doing that, the very small number of rehabilitative services in Canada's correctional system at that time were closed by the Conservatives.
For instance, when I was visiting Kent, I walked into a huge, dark room, and when the lights were turned on, I saw it was full of equipment, such as band saws, Skilsaws and all sorts of construction equipment. There was a program where federal offenders were taught basic vocational skills, and they were making things like furniture, which was then purchased by the federal government at cost. Not only were we teaching marginalized people actual skills that they could use in the workplace when they got out, since more than 95% of offenders in federal institutions come back into society at some point, but the federal government was getting quality furniture at a below-market price. It was a win-win. However, that program was closed by the Conservatives.
When I visited the Kingston penitentiary, and also Dorchester, they had extraordinarily successful prison farm programs where the people inside were able to earn credit for good behaviour and gain privileges to work with agricultural projects and farm animals. By the way, there was a prize cow population at Kingston. The bloodlines were fantastic, and it was an absolutely outstanding herd. Members should have seen the impact that these programs had on the emotional and rehabilitative personalities of the people inside. However, those programs were closed by the Conservatives.
To this day, I say that we are doing a terrible job in Canada's correctional institutions of actually responding to the real needs of most offenders and ensuring that when they come out they do not repeat their offence. Here is the bottom line: I am not saying this out of a sense of compassion only; I am saying this because I do not want a single offender in Canada's correctional institutions to come back into society and reoffend, and that is exactly what they are going to do if we do not adjust and respond to their real needs.
I want to talk quickly about mandatory minimums. The bottom line is that I, and my party, oppose mandatory minimums, except for the most serious of crimes, where, of course, they are appropriate. Why? It is because they do not work; they do not have any deterrent effect. It is because they have a discriminatory effect. It is because they are largely unconstitutional. All we have to do is look to the United States, which is the pioneer of using such sentences, to see what effect they have on crime. The United States locks up the largest percentage of its population of any country on the planet.
I support Bill C-5. It is time that we start adopting progressive, rational, effective policies to keep Canadians safe. Punishing and keeping people in prison longer without access to the services they need does not work. It is cruel, and it does not keep Canadians safe. It is time to have policies that actually keep Canadians and victims safe in this country. Let us adopt the bill and take a first step towards that.
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- Jun/9/22 1:42:59 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague quoted Lisa Lapointe, a very respected public health official in British Columbia. She has called for the decriminalization of drugs and for treating drug use and substance use disorders as health issues.
My hon. colleague properly empathizes with the unbelievable, astronomical death rate in British Columbia. The New Democrats have pointed to the problem being the toxic street supply, and the fact that decades and decades of a “tough on crime, war on drugs” approach, which attempts to punish and interdict drugs, has been an absolute, abject, empirical, total failure.
The member claims to be logical, so could she tell me if she thinks the war on drugs has been successful? Does she think that more punishment and trying to interdict drugs would give any different result than we have had over the last 50 years?
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- Jun/9/22 1:14:18 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, the bill before us raises some really fundamental questions about what is effective in terms of criminal justice. Of course, those of us on this side of the House in the NDP believe that the evidence is crystal clear that mandatory minimums are simply not effective in helping to reduce crime. One thing I think that we are well aware of is the very high degree of addiction and mental health issues among inmates in federal correctional institutions. In fact, we did a study about 10 years ago at the public safety committee, and found that about 70% of inmates in federal systems suffered from an addiction or mental health problem.
I am just wondering if my hon. colleague has any thoughts on whether it might be a more effective public policy, and help keep the public safe, if we directed resources toward trying to help people deal with their mental health and addictions issues while they were serving at the pleasure of the Crown, as they say, as opposed to simply making them stay longer in prison without any access to services.
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Madam Speaker, I am deeply honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-216, the health-based approach to the substance use act.
I would like to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, for introducing this legislation and for his tireless efforts to advance compassionate and evidenced-based drug policy in this country.
In the shadow of COVID-19, the overdose epidemic has rapidly worsened across Canada, and it is hard to believe that could have happened. In British Columbia, 2,224 died from overdoses in 2021 alone. This represents the deadliest year on record in Canadian history, and a 26% increase from 2020. December 2021 was also the deadliest month on record in British Columbia, with 215 people losing their lives that month alone from an opioid-poisoned drug death. That is the equivalent of about seven deaths per day. Across Canada, over 25,000 Canadians have lost their lives to the overdose epidemic in the last six years alone.
Although COVID-19 has fuelled this crisis, it did not create it. Decades of criminalization; a toxic, poisoned, illicit supply; and a lack of timely access to harm reduction, treatment and recovery services have caused this ongoing catastrophe.
The Liberal government claims that its response to COVID-19 has been evidenced-based and informed by science and the advice of public health experts. It is time to apply that approach to Canada's other epidemic. It is time to treat substance use addictions as the health issues they truly are. The legislation before the House today would do exactly that.
The health-based approach to the substance use act would comprehensively address Canada's overdose epidemic as follows: It would decriminalize personal drug possession; it would provide for record expungement; it would ensure a low-barrier access to a regulated, safe supply; and it would expand access to harm reduction, treatment and recovery services across Canada while also focusing on prevention and education.
Decriminalization is one of those issues on which I believe voters are far ahead of politicians. It is a policy area where public opinion more accurately reflects the empirical data than our laws do. That is because not a single community across Canada is untouched by addiction. Everyone has a mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, cousin, grandparent, partner, friend, neighbour, coworker, child who has struggled with problematic substance use or substance use disorder, or maybe it is even they themself. Indeed, Canadians understand intuitively something that is critically important to acknowledge in the House tonight: Those who are suffering are not criminals. Rather, they are vulnerable people experiencing tremendous pain.
In his years working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Dr. Gabor Maté, whom I consider to be an expert of global stature and a great Canadian, has found that childhood trauma and emotional pain lie at the root of addiction. Dr. Maté said, “This is not a war on drugs. This is a war on drug addicts.”
Addiction can never be understood if looked at through the lens of moralism and judgment. It is time, as a society, that we ask not why the addiction but instead why the pain. Indeed, if we accept that pain and trauma are at the root of addiction, then criminalization can only be seen as cruel and counterproductive, because it compounds the very problem it seeks to correct. Stigma, shame and abuse are the core emotional issues for those suffering from substance disorder, and criminalizing their behaviour exacerbates and deepens that shame and stigma. This is obvious.
Criminal sanctions are society's way of imposing maximum trauma on individuals. They get harassed by the police; they go through the indignity of arrest; they go into the very serious, intimidating context of a court; they go through a trial; they go to jail. This system is designed to impose the most serious pressure society can possibly impose. In other words, when we criminalize substance use, we retraumatize people who are already struggling to cope with trauma.
Moreover, decades of evidence have demonstrated that criminalization serves to keep people who use drugs away from prevention and early treatment health services due to fear of being arrested, labelled or outed. Criminalization also pushes people who use drugs to rely on an illicit and obviously toxic drug supply.
If criminalizing drug use worked, we would have eliminated it years ago, but instead we have spent billions of dollars, harmed millions of people, torn families and communities apart, ruined individuals' lives and achieved nothing. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. If that is the case, decades of lawmakers in the House have been and are insane.
Part 1 of this legislation would end Canada's war on drugs once and for all by striking the prohibition against personal possession from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It would end the insanity of the war on drugs.
Furthermore, criminal records amplify the harms of criminalization by exposing people who use drugs to ongoing discrimination and create barriers to housing, gainful employment, travel and community involvement. This in turn leads to further stigmatization and marginalization.
The disproportionate impact of criminal records on racialized and indigenous communities has also been well documented. That is why part 2 of this legislation is so essential to a health-based approach to drug use. It would ensure that criminal records from previous offences related to personal possession would be fully expunged, so that someone does not carry stigmatization for the rest of their lives. Unlike the current Liberal government's failed policy on cannabis pardons, the process outlined in this bill would provide for an automatic, cost-free and complete deletion of records.
Finally, part 3 of this legislation would require the development and implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to address the harm caused by problematic substance use. It would get at the real cause of the deaths. This strategy would be developed in collaboration with key stakeholders, including advocacy organizations, frontline health care providers; and, importantly, individuals with lived experience. It would address the root causes of problematic substance use; ensure access to a safe, regulated supply; provide universal access to recovery, treatment and harm reduction services; and reduce the stigma associated with substance use. There is an urgent need for low-barrier access to a safe supply of pharmaceutical-grade alternatives to illegal street drugs of all types for everyone now. Given that the main driver of the overdose crisis is the fact that the illicit, poisoned drug supply is toxic and unpredictable, experts have been clear that the death toll cannot be abated without this evidence-based measure.
Although limited access to safe supply has been provided in some jurisdictions, existing programs do not come anywhere even close to meeting demand across the country. To emphasize, it is the toxic, poisoned street supply of drugs run by criminalized manufacturers with no regulation that is killing Canadians by the thousands. Any law that does not address this reality is not health-based; it is contributing to fatalities.
Some in the current government say they believe in treating addiction as a health issue and not a criminal one. I have heard three consecutive Liberal health ministers and a Liberal Prime Minister say this many times, but they refuse to act on this claim. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the law that criminalizes drug use and addiction, and it is a federal law.
I am calling out every member of the House, especially Liberals, on that contradiction tonight, because this is a contradiction that kills. They cannot say they treat drug use and addiction as a health issue and leave it criminalized on the federal books to continue to kill people.
I hope all parliamentarians stop the insanity. Let us start treating drug use and addiction as the health issue that it really is.
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- Feb/8/22 8:37:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I think we all know in the House that prohibition did not work to reduce alcohol use and the war on drugs has not worked to reduce drug use. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That is just common sense, because to address a problem, one has to correctly identify the cause of it. Experts in addiction tell us that the cause of drug use and addiction is pain and trauma. Therefore, arresting, jailing, criminalizing and adding pain and trauma to drug users will never work, and it has not.
Does the member think that criminalizing drug users and forcing them to purchase poisoned drugs from street dealers is something this Parliament and her party should continue to allow to happen in Canada?
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- Feb/8/22 8:05:09 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the war on drugs is now universally regarded as an utter failure. It has wasted billions of dollars and hurt millions of people. We now know that criminalizing drug use and addiction not only does not work, it adds to the harm and actually makes things worse. Leaving the toxic supply of drugs to street level criminals is literally killing thousands of Canadians every year and, in fact, more every year since the Liberals have been in power since 2015.
Given these facts, and the fact that the major source of criminalization is federal law, why would this member's government not respect the evidence and act now to decriminalize drug use, create a regulated, low-barrier safe supply and make prevention, education and universal access to treatment the policy of her government?
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- Dec/16/21 12:56:59 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-2
Madam Speaker, I would like to add my congratulations to the hon. member on her first speech in Parliament. She quite rightly raised the other pandemic in this country, which is the opioid overdose crisis. She also talked very sensibly about abandoning what does not work. I postulate that the war on drugs has not worked. The attempt to criminalize those who use drugs clearly has not had any effect. We are seeing record deaths in this country.
Does the member agree with the NDP that it is time to address the root of the problem, which is a toxic street drug supply, and move to a regulated, low-barrier, safe supply of drugs, so that at least those in our communities who are suffering the scourge of addiction, buying drugs from organized crime on the street and dying in record numbers, can get access to drugs in known titrations?
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- Dec/14/21 12:07:15 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, as I said, in terms of a mandate from Canadians, I fundamentally believe it is there. Most Canadians right now want their government to decriminalize drug use and to treat it authentically and comprehensively as a health issue.
The government has said on many occasions that it is guided by evidence, as it should be. The Liberals say that quite consistently. They have said it throughout the COVID crisis. Why do they not follow the evidence when it comes to drug policy? There is a consensus, from public health officers to the Canadian chiefs of police to addictions experts to people with lived experience to drug researchers, that we must fully decriminalize drug use and provide a different approach to this.
What we are asking for in the House is leadership.
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- Dec/14/21 11:56:19 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House to speak to a bill that is not only a long time coming and not only important to many Canadians, but is one that touches upon a very real and profoundly important issue that touches every community in our nation.
The bill deals with the issue of mandatory minimums and the initiative of the government to remove mandatory minimums for a number of prescribed sentences. It would remove mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offences under the Criminal Code and then some others with respect to tobacco and firearms provisions.
I was in the House when many mandatory minimum sentences were put into the Criminal Code by the previous Harper Conservative government, and our party opposed that approach then and we oppose it now. We do so for a number of reasons. The New Democrats have long opposed the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences in our Criminal Code for all but the most serious of crimes. These are some of the reasons for that position.
First, it is a very blunt tool. It removes the discretion of a judge to shape sentences to suit the specifics of every case. I happen to have been trained as a lawyer, and I spent 16 years litigating cases in the labour setting. I would posit before the House that every single case that comes before a judge is unique. It touches upon unique individuals with unique circumstances and it occurs in very specific circumstances and conditions. The essence of justice is to fashion a resolution that suits the particular circumstances that come before a court.
Politicians should not be sentencing people from this chamber. In our system of government, we have separation of powers, the judiciary separated from the legislative branch, separated from the executive branch, separated from the police force. These are core elements of our modern democracy and they are very important ones.
I am always suspicious of attempts by politicians in the House to try to reach into the courtrooms of our nation to tell judges what to do in a particular situation. What is particularly wrong with mandatory minimums is that they purport to tell judges to sentence a person irrespective of the person before them and the circumstances of that case.
Second, mandatory minimum sentences are routinely ruled as unconstitutional in our country. I think we could safely say that in most cases, mandatory minimum sentences do not comport with our Constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Third, the evidence is crystal clear now that mandatory minimums are a major factor that contributes directly to the overrepresentation of the incarceration of the most marginalized Canadians, including indigenous, racialized and poor people.
As an example, indigenous people make up about 4.9% of our population, but if we were to walk into our prisons, we would find that 30% of the people in prisons are indigenous. With respect to indigenous women, it is even more shockingly appalling that 42% of the women in prisons are indigenous. A major factor contributing to that is the use of mandatory minimum sentences.
Finally, mandatory minimum sentences do not work. I need only point to the United States as the best example for that. The United States locks up the highest percentage of its population of any country in the world, and it has done nothing to reduce the crime rates or the rate of violent offences in the United States. If it were true that the use of mandatory minimum sentences reduced crime, then there would be empirical evidence of that in our neighbour to the south, and it has been proven to be quite the opposite.
In fact, the State of Texas, one of the most tough-on-crime jurisdictions we will find on this planet, has publicly stated that mandatory minimum sentences have not worked. All that has happened is that it has locked up an incredibly high percentage of the population in that state, with no impact on crime rates.
Therefore, I support this measure and I support the bill. Discretionary sentences and diversion from prison are distinctly preferable to mandatory minimum sentences that lock up more Canadians, for longer time, with no positive effect.
However, make no mistake that the bill would do nothing, zero, to address the core problem with our drug policy; that is to treat drug addiction and substance use as health issues, not criminal ones. That is the root cause of the problem with our drug policy. Substance use and addiction are health issues, not criminal ones. They are not moral failings. They are not issues of character. They are pure issues of health. Addiction is a complex biopsychosocial illness. It results in compulsive behaviour that is rooted in trauma. Substance use disorder is listed in the “DSM-5”, which is a diagnostic manual that our medical professionals use.
This is one of those issues where I will say that the general population is far ahead of the politicians of our country and, dare I say, many politicians in the House. That is because no family, not one, is untouched by addiction or substance use disorder. Everyone has a mother or father, a sister or brother, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, a grandparent or maybe even himself or herself, who has suffered from substance use, whether that is alcoholism or addiction. These families know something that is important to acknowledge in the House: Those people who are suffering are not criminals; they are sufferers, they are patients, they are people struggling with an illness.
Dr. Gabor Maté, whom I consider to be an authority of global stature in our country, a great Canadian, has found that the basic cause of addiction is trauma. He is on record as saying that after treating people in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver for many years, he never treated a single person who did not have significant childhood trauma.
Therefore, what does criminalizing those people do to them? Criminal sanctions are society's way of imposing maximum trauma on citizens. They get accosted by the police. They go through the trauma of arrest. They go into the very serious, intimidating context of a court. They go through a trial. They go to jail. This system is designed to impose the most serious pressure society can possibly impose. In other words, what we do when we criminalize drug policy is we re-traumatize people whose main issue is that they suffer from trauma. That is completely counterintuitive. In fact, it is cruel and it does not work.
If criminalizing drug use worked, we would have eliminated it years ago. We have spent billions of dollars, incarcerated millions of people around the world, harmed tens of millions of people, and achieved nothing. Today, Canada is setting, year after year, record deaths in opioid overdose. Every year since the government was elected in 2015, the death rate has gone up. Since 2016 until 2020, over 17,000 Canadians have died. In B.C., six and a half people die every day.
I will conclude by saying that stigma, shame and punishment are the core emotional issues of those suffering from substance use disorder and criminalizing their behaviour exacerbates and deepens that shame and stigma. We do not need to get rid of mandatory minimum sentences; we need to decriminalize drug use, bring in a regulated low-barrier safe supply, focus on education prevention and a treatment on demand through our public health care system. Then we will make progress on drug policy and use in our country.
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- Dec/14/21 11:54:49 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, the hon. colleague stated in his speech, and we know that the Liberal Party in government has said on many occasions, that he acknowledges that drug use and addiction have to be treated as health issues and not criminal ones. However, the bill before us would retain the criminalized attitude towards drug use; it would simply change the sentencing.
Can the member perhaps explain to the House and help members understand how the bill, by keeping drug use and addiction in the criminal sphere, would honour the concept of treating addiction as a health issue and not a criminal one?
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