- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Leader of the Opposition
- Conservative
- Carleton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $61,288.13
- Government Page
- May/9/24 11:07:47 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that since the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister took office, opioid overdose deaths across Canada have increased by 166% according to the most recent data available, the House call on the Prime Minister to:
(a) proactively reject the City of Toronto's request to the federal government to make deadly hard drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin, and meth legal;
(b) reject the City of Montreal's vote calling on the federal government to make deadly hard drugs legal;
(c) deny any active or future requests from provinces, territories and municipalities seeking federal approval to make deadly hard drugs legal in their jurisdiction; and
(d) end taxpayer funded narcotics and redirect this money into treatment and recovery programs for drug addiction.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.
A couple of years ago, I paid a visit to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and I was both shocked and surprised. The shock is self-evident. Anyone who has been there would have seen the carnage of our fellow citizens lying face-first on the pavement in overdoses, the many more who stand on two feet with their heads between their legs, bent over in a spine-twisting posture that is common among those who are maxed out on fentanyl. These are spine-twisting postures that leave them bent forward, often for the rest of their lives. Those lives are often shortened, as the game of Russian roulette of using fentanyl risks ending their breathing every time they do it.
There is an unmistakable smell of too many people and too few bathrooms, with tents that go block after block after block. The police pointed to one tent, identifying it as the headquarters of the “United Nations”, a self-described gang that supplies the guns and other deadly weapons for the street. There are people screaming at the top of their lungs, having lost control of themselves while in a static state of near overdose. These things are all stunning to witness, even though one might have expected, knowing the stats, that they were all there.
We know that the Downtown Eastside was an experiment brought in by NDP municipal and provincial governments, but it was an experiment that the Prime Minister saw and said needed to be expanded right across the country. He has succeeded as, now, these tent encampments are regular in every part of the country. In your home province, Mr. Speaker, Halifax has 35 homeless encampments. That is 35 encampments in quaint, beautiful, peaceful Halifax. Every Canadian knows of such an encampment in their community, even though nine years ago it was unthinkable.
The unmistakable link between this policy and the results that I just described play out now in the rare but courageous journalism that has begun, finally, to expose the cause. I point to an article in the National Post that reads, “Miller says that her daughter Madison told her that they 'could go up to a drug addict and ask for dillies and they’d have bottles of them, because they would go into pharmacies, get them filled up and sell them to the kids.'” “Dillies” is slang for the hydromorphone that is funded by government.
A National Post article from March 11 reads:
“I had several patients who were drug-free for a long time and just couldn't resist the temptation of this very cheap hydromorphone that was now on the street,” said Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addiction physician. “Every addiction medicine doctor I have spoken to has told me that, on a daily basis in their offices, they're dealing with diverted hydromorphone, either from new clients coming in who are addicted to it, or patients of theirs that are using it as a drug of abuse.”
Global News provided rare, courageous journalism on this as well, showing that the price for a hydromorphone pill on the streets of Vancouver has dropped from $10 to 25¢ since the government began subsidizing and spreading the drug far and wide. There are reports of dealers standing outside of pharmacies waiting for those who have the prescription to get the so-called safe supply to immediately deliver it to the dealers who can then sell it to finance other terrible drugs. Then, of course, we have the overdoses that result as people graduate from those drugs.
The Prime Minister has all of this evidence. He has the evidence that, since he took office, overdose deaths are up 166% nationwide. They are up the most in the places where his and the NDP's radical policies have been most enthusiastically embraced. That is in British Columbia, where it has grown by 380%. Only with an election on the horizon did the B.C. government admit its failing and try to reverse the policy, just in time to go to the polls. However, still, Toronto and Montreal are applying for the same decriminalization of hard, illicit, unregulated drugs that caused such carnage in British Columbia, a request that the Prime Minister steadfastly refuses to rule out.
I said that I was shocked and surprised. What surprised me when I went to the Downtown Eastside were the people who greeted me there. They were not the addicts. They were not the police. They were a small platoon of activists who somehow learned of my arrival, even though it was unannounced and was not posted anywhere for either the media or the social networks. They were there to record and to follow me, and to heckle me, which is fine. I can deal with that. I do it every day.
However, it confused me. Who is paying for all this? Where is the money coming from for the activists who are pushing this? It turns out that there is a lot of money being made. Let me read a headline. “Prof, former public health officer launch company to produce legal heroin for treatment”.
Martin Schechter, who led the study, called the the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI), and Perry Kendall, B.C.'s first public health officer, are moving to change that.
Frustrated by the lack of action from government, the two have launched a company called FPP...short for Fair Price Pharma, with the goal of producing an affordable domestic supply of legal, injectable heroin for use in treatment.
More than 5,500 British Columbians have died from illicit drug and overdoses since 2016, including 170 in May.
Dr. Schechter, who is also a professor of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, said in an e-mail that the overdose poisoning crisis [was a] failure to expand...legal heroin—a proven...cost-effective treatment—in the face of desperate need for safer supply, [that] drove the two doctors to act.
[They said that he has a company] to set up a dedicated facility to manufacture the product and offer it at a cost to interested health care providers, including those in other provinces.
He and Dr. Kendall are expected to meet this month with Health Canada's therapeutic products directorate, which regulates prescription drugs, to determine the tests and evidence needed to obtain a license.... They estimate they will need about $3-million to launch the product.
Of course, they are making money. Later, they would complain. “B.C. doctors upset their 'safe supply' of heroin going unprescribed during overdose crisis”. They began to lobby for more money.
This is from other news articles. Perry Kendall, the former Provincial Health Officer until 2018 is an advocate for safe supply. He founded Fair Price Pharma to distribute heroin.
Mark Tyndall, who was B.C.'s deputy provincial health officer and was an executive medical director, is the founder of MySafe project.
As I said, Martin Schechter was not with the B.C. government directly, but was responsible for the research that led to the so-called safe supply. He founded Fair Price Pharma.
These are the companies that are actually making the money and are intimidating opponents of their plan. This is turning into a gigantic, self-licking ice cream cone, one that needs to end. It is in the service of money-making and not of the public.
That is why common-sense Conservatives would stop funding hard narcotics, would ban hard drugs and would put the money into treatment and recovery services that would bring our loved ones home, drug-free.
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- May/8/24 3:09:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we were in government there were 60% fewer overdose deaths. This problem accelerated after the Prime Minister brought in these radical programs, which are not done anywhere else, to give corrupt pharmaceutical companies money to hand out more drugs.
David McEvoy, an addiction outreach worker right here in Ottawa, said that he witnessed the so-called safe supply clients “diverting their taxpayer-funded drugs to the black market”, and that they were given an “insane” quantity of drugs.
Will the Prime Minister stop giving out insane quantities of heroin-grade opioids and start bringing treatment so we can bring our loved ones home drug free?
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- May/1/24 2:45:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is again false. The government is now suddenly and only partially changing its message on decriminalization. The Prime Minister's minister of addictions is out now saying she is waiting for more information from British Columbia on its request to recriminalize crack, heroin, meth and other hard drugs in hospitals, on transit and in parks.
There are six people dying every single day. What more information does he need?
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- Apr/29/24 2:21:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the Prime Minister is not worth the drugs, disorder, death and destruction. In May 2022, he granted the B.C. NDP government's request for a Criminal Code exemption to allow crack, meth, heroin and fentanyl use in parks, coffee shops, hospitals and beaches. Overdose deaths since have exploded to a record-smashing 2,500 lost lives.
The B.C. NDP government has reversed course and asked the federal government to recriminalize some hard drugs. Why will the Prime Minister not recriminalize these deadly drugs?
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- May/18/23 2:25:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, emissions only went down when the government actually locked down the country for COVID, if it wants to do that forever.
The Prime Minister decriminalized crack, heroin and other hard drugs on January 31. He has flooded the streets with taxpayer-funded hydromorphone, and today we have learned the tragic results. The report from British Columbia shows that seven people are dying every day of overdoses. In April, overdose rates were up 17%.
This experiment has failed. When will the Prime Minister get common sense, get drugs off our streets and get our people into treatment?
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- May/18/23 10:14:16 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) Canada is in the midst of an opioid crisis that has killed over 35,000 people since 2016,
(ii) since 2017, the federal government has spent over $800 million on its failed Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy, including over $100 million in funding for hard-drug supply projects across Canada, and plans to spend an additional $74 million to “scale up” these projects over the next five years,
(iii) since tax-funded drug supply was ramped up in 2020, opioid deaths have only gone up, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada,
(iv) in 2020, slightly less than 7,000 people died of opioid overdoses, while only 3,000 died of overdoses in 2016, according to the Library of Parliament,
(v) in British Columbia alone, yearly drug overdose deaths have increased by 330% between 2015 and 2022,
(vi) recently, a Global News reporter in East Vancouver was able to buy 26 hits for $30 in just 30 minutes of a dangerous and highly addictive opioid that is distributed in tax-funded drug supply programs and flooding our streets with cheap opioids,
the House call on the government to immediately reverse its deadly policies and redirect all funds from taxpayer-funded, hard drug programs to addiction, treatment and recovery programs.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, everything feels broken. Life costs more. Work does not pay. Housing costs have doubled. The Prime Minister divides to control the people. Worst of all, crime and chaos, drugs and disorder rage in our streets. Nowhere is this worse than in the opioid overdose crisis, which has expanded so dramatically in the last several years.
The Prime Minister has a theory, backed up by a group of activists, most of them tax-funded, pharmaceutical companies and others that stand to gain from perpetuating the crisis. The theory is that, if the government provides powerful, heroin-like drugs that are uncontaminated, addicts will no longer use more deadly fentanyl, they will practise safe drug use and we will no longer have overdoses.
The Prime Minister has spent $78 million on 28 projects giving out free drugs. His recent budget proposes another $100 million for more tax-funded drugs. This includes heroin dispensary machines, where people can walk up, press some buttons and heroin pops out. It also includes prescriptions that allow people to take hydromorphone out into the street and use it or sell it, however they like. The theory is that this would divert away from more dangerous fentanyl. Let us look at the facts.
This is fact number one: Since the Prime Minister took office, there have been more than 34,000 apparent opioid overdose deaths. Here is another fact: This is not a problem the Prime Minister inherited; it is one he helped create. A total of 5,360 apparent opioid overdose deaths occurred from January to September 2022. This is approximately 20 deaths per day. It is a 173% increase from 2016, the first full calendar year he was in office. In other words, since his policies have come into effect, the overdose numbers have nearly tripled.
This is fact number three: While the deaths have risen across the country under the Prime Minister's policies, they have been the very worst in those provincial and municipal jurisdictions that have most enthusiastically embraced them. For example, in British Columbia, where in most jurisdictions, particularly Vancouver, all three levels of government have endorsed the so-called safe supply and decriminalization of hard drugs, the levels of overdose deaths have been the highest. Across B.C., the number of overdose deaths is up 330%.
The COVID excuse no longer works. This is a fact: Despite the claim, by supporters of handing out and decriminalizing drugs, that COVID was to blame for the crisis, what we have seen is that, as COVID moves farther away in the rearview mirror, the overdose deaths actually increase. For example, in March of this year, we had 9% more overdose deaths in B.C. than in March 2022, and 23% more overdose deaths than in March 2021. The more we move away from COVID, the more the overdose deaths increase. In fact, the deaths are not coinciding with COVID. They are coinciding with the recent decriminalization of crack, heroin, fentanyl and other hard drugs on January 1.
We are told that all the experts agree, just like the Liberals tell us all the time whenever they do something that defies common sense. We remember that all the experts agreed that printing money would not cause inflation, right before it led to a 40-year high, or that catch-and-release bail would not increase crime rates, before crime skyrocketed 32%.
We are told that giving out and decriminalizing hard drugs would reduce drug overdoses. These so-called experts are typically pie-in-the-sky theorists with no experience getting people off drugs, or they are members of the “misery industry”, those paid activists and public health bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the crisis continuing.
The real academic scholarship is clear, if the minister would even bother to read it. A thorough study by dozens of doctors and researchers from Stanford University, published in The Lancet and shared by a former adviser to President Obama, found that:
At the same time, evidence clearly shows the folly of assuming that population health inherently improves when health-care systems provide as many opioids as possible with as few possible regulatory constraints as possible. Policies that should attract scepticism include dispensing of hydromorphone from vending machines and prescribing a range of potent opioids and other drugs (eg., benzodiazepines, stimulants) to individuals with OUD in hopes of creating a safe addictive-drug supply and eliminating the supervision of methadone patients—ie, converting the system to unmonitored, long-term prescriptions on a take-home basis.
The study goes on to comment on the claim that hydromorphone, which is what the government is giving out, is safe. It continues:
Although expressed from a public health viewpoint, these messages echo the opioid manufacturers in presuming that unrestricted opioid provision can only improve public health. The faith of some advocates that opioids are safe as long as they are not derived from illicit markets is impossible to reconcile with the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths from legal, pharmaceutical grade opioids that preceded the introduction of fentanyl into U.S. and Canadian heroin markets.
Furthermore, the safe supply program uses hydromorphone, which, according to one study published in a pharmacology journal, “produced similar subjective and physiological effects as heroin, but was more potent than heroin.” This is the stuff the minister and the Prime Minister are giving out using our tax dollars.
In a 2020 podcast, Dr. Mark Tyndall, one of Canada's earliest safer supply advocates, said that he had tested the urine of 15 patients who were on safer supply and found that 90% of them used fentanyl. In other words, they were not being diverted from fentanyl; they were using it in conjunction with safer supply. Now we know that it is even worse than that; the hydromorphone is being resold by the user to children, and the profit is being reinvested in buying fentanyl. In other words, the government is not only giving out dangerous hydromorphone but also actually, in effect, giving out fentanyl by giving the user the hydromorphone to sell to raise the revenue to buy fentanyl. The government is using our tax dollars to give out fentanyl on our streets and cause this crisis. Meanwhile, the cost of a hit of hydromorphone has dropped by between 70% and 95%, to roughly a dollar a hit, because the government is effectively paying for it and handing it out far and wide.
This makes no sense. The facts and evidence disprove it as a strategy. This is a radical and out-of-touch approach, which is not aligned with that of any other successful jurisdiction in the world. It is quite the opposite of what is being done in places like Portugal, which has focused on recovery, not on handing out free hard drugs. Therein lies the hope. We can turn the hurt the Prime Minister has caused into the hope Canadians need.
In Alberta, which is thoroughly rejecting the decriminalization and tax-funded handout of hard drugs and instead putting the money into recovery, we have seen, in the most recent data, a 30% reduction in the number of overdose deaths. That is because it is clear that what people suffering from addiction need is help getting off the drugs. To have that, we need recovery communities where they can go to get help with breaking the addiction and, if necessary, be given a bit of medication to relieve the side effects of getting off the drug, and then have the psychotherapy necessary to overcome the underlying reasons they got into drug addiction in the first place. We know this works. The evidence backs it up.
Therefore, our common-sense plan is to take the money away from subsidizing heroin-like drugs, and instead put all that money into recovery and treatment and sue the powerful pharmaceutical companies that helped cause this crisis, so we can use the proceeds of that lawsuit to fund even more recovery. That is how we are going to bring home our loved ones drug-free. It is how we will turn hurt into hope. It is the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- May/16/23 2:58:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people are dying because the policies of the Prime Minister are killing them. His policies are flooding the streets with drugs that now go for $1 a hit. Someone can buy 26 hits of hydromorphone, which is an analog to heroin, for $30. These are drugs paid for by Canadian tax dollars under a program by the government that has led to a 300% increase in drug overdose deaths.
Why will the Liberals not get some common sense, end dollars for drugs and put our people in treatment?
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