- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Beaches—East York
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,505.63
- Government Page
- Feb/8/22 8:48:06 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, far be it from me to commend the government for certain actions, but I will say that, on this particular crisis, we have seen significant action since 2015. We have seen an expansion of supervised consumption sites. We know that those save lives. We have seen hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, including to expand treatment options. We have seen the restoration of harm reduction as a central pillar of our drug strategy.
My criticism is different. It is not to say we are not taking action. Certainly we are taking much more significant action than past governments in this country, but there is the scale of the crisis: the number of people who are losing their lives. These are preventable deaths. If we change our policies, these are preventable deaths.
The government is acting, but is the government acting quickly enough, proportionate to the scale of the crisis? That is where the criticism lies.
158 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/8/22 8:46:06 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Chair, I will say two things. I worked closely with the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Bryan Larkin, to ensure that a bill I introduced in the House had their support. By the way, that bill is now part of Bill C-5, and that bill has their support.
Regardless of new spending, that bill will have the support of the chiefs of police, and I hope it has the support of my Conservative colleagues. It is my genuine hope that we rally across parties in the House and we do the right thing.
Of course we need more money to expand treatment options. I would say I actually do not want police to be the first responders for what is fundamentally a mental health crisis in an individual's life. I do not think that is the appropriate response. I think Portugal is probably too coercive, and Bill C-5 is probably too coercive in that way. We should get police focusing on criminals, not focusing on people suffering from mental health problems.
Ideally, that is the answer. To the member's point, we absolutely need much more significant funding to expand treatment options. That is an area I think we could work together on.
211 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Chair, I have jointly seconded that bill. I will happily support that bill. I will support any legislation that moves us closer to a safer supply and that moves us closer to an evidence-based approach that treats drug use as the health issue that it is.
We do not treat gambling addiction with the criminal law. We do not treat alcohol addiction with the criminal law. However, we think this is different: It is an illicit substance, which is only illicit, by the way, because of past racist policies directed at particular communities if we track the history back in this country. We treat different levels of addiction very differently.
I am happy to support that bill, but fundamentally we need the government to put more dollars on the table, and we need provinces to take those dollars and to follow the evidence.
145 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/8/22 8:39:08 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, at the outset, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.
I also want to thank the member for Yukon for ensuring that this take-note debate happened. I very much appreciate his advocacy and the health-focused advocacy that he has.
The sheer scale of this crisis is hard to fathom. We have lost 25,000 Canadians since the beginning of 2016. Every one of those has a personal story, of course, impacting many more family, friends, co-workers, loved ones and others, but it is not just opioid-related deaths. We should describe this problem as what it is: It is a poisoned drug crisis. I think a recent report from Public Health Ontario and the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network described it accurately as an opioid toxicity crisis, and we should all describe it in this way.
We know the laws on the books are ineffective. The police chiefs have told us the laws are ineffective, but it is worse than that. The laws actually contribute to these deaths because they push people away from treatment. We know that on the evidence. They stigmatize people and they push people away from treatment. What is worse, prohibition is the absence of regulation. When it is left to the black market, what we get is poisoned drugs and those poisoned drugs are killing people. It is prohibition that is killing people.
We know that it is getting worse, of course, in this pandemic. It was bad before the pandemic, but it is getting worse. What is the answer? I have heard colleagues say they do not know the exact right approach. I have heard the Prime Minister say that decriminalization is not a silver bullet, and it is not. We absolutely need to do everything we can to stop the scale of death. Let us listen to the experts. There was a recent substance use task force that included a police presence, that included a presence from mental health experts, and that included a range of different voices. Do members know what they called for? They called for bold action for decriminalization, and for a regulatory approach. Let us talk about regulating a safer supply and expanding that safer supply.
Do members know what the answer to a poisoned drug crisis is? It is ensuring that the drugs are not poisoned. It is as simple as that to save lives today. Decriminalization is not a silver bullet, but do members know what it does? It ensures that we treat drug use as a health issue, and that we encourage people to seek treatment.
I worry when the Portugal conversation comes up. By the way, Portugal still was probably more coercive than I would like, but if anyone wants to get up and support the Portugal approach, we should do that immediately because it would save lives. It not only removes the stigma and encourages people to seek treatment, but in Portugal they also wildly expanded treatment. That is also what we have to do, but not in steps when so many people are dying. We do it all at once.
If we want to talk about Portugal, I would push back a little bit on my Conservative colleagues. I would say that Portugal decriminalized and rapidly expanded treatment at the same time because it was facing a crisis. Do members know what we need to do? At the same time, we need to rapidly expand treatment options.
There was $500 million promised in a platform that builds up $150 million from a previous Parliament. We need to deliver that money in the budget to make sure there is evidence-based treatment. That should go hand in hand with removing ineffective criminal laws, and those are not my words but the words of police chiefs, that push people away from the very treatment we want to provide. We need a safer supply, because a poisoned drug crisis is killing people.
Members should not listen to me. They should listen to CAMH. Listen to the police chiefs. Listen to the experts on the substance use task force. Listen to every single expert who has looked at this issue with any seriousness to say what we are doing is killing people. Let us do something differently and, yes, let us do it all at once. This level of a crisis demands that we do everything we can, all at once, to save lives.
747 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/8/22 8:24:35 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, the member and I have engaged on this subject in the past here in the House. It feels a bit like déjà vu, and many more people have died since.
Recently, in June, the expert task force on substance use recommended bold action on three fronts. I do not think this is sufficient, and I think we need to expand treatment options. We also know that thousands of Canadians are dying because of a poisoned drug supply.
As an interim measure to save lives today, would the member support a safer drug supply? This is not a permanent fix for down the road. We have to figure out a long-term solution, but what about the short term, as a matter of saving lives today?
130 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
