Thank you very much, Chair.
I want to thank my colleague for his hard work on this topic. I think everyone around this table would realize clearly that this is a topic that is incredibly emotional for my colleague, both because he has a heart as big—as my grandmother might say—as all outdoors, but also because it's very personal to him. I want to thank him not only for sharing his passion and his personal story, but for his advocacy for those who, sadly, don't have a voice here themselves. I would echo his comments that, realistically, they are who we're all here for.
It's interesting, colleagues, that oftentimes people wonder why this is important to us, why we are fighting about it, whether there is a plan to deal with it elsewhere in the calendar and those kinds of things. You look back to the study—I know our colleague from the NDP was here and Ms. Sidhu was also here—in 2016, when this issue came before the health committee. Looking at the statistics at that point in time, it was astonishing to the committee that there was a death every three days due to an opioid overdose. That was 2016.
Here we are, after eight years, and we know clearly now that there are more than 20 deaths a day. We've gone from a death every three days to more than 20 deaths a day. Should that seize this committee...? Back then, a death every three days was an opioid crisis. Now, we have 20 deaths a day. I wish I were a wordsmith and could tell you the superlative of an opioid crisis, but I don't know that there is a word that could even describe what we now exist with, which is 20-plus deaths a day.
Why is it also important? People will say that we're politicizing this. It's partly a political issue, I'm sad to say, because of this issue of safer or safe, or whatever you want to call it.... Let's just call it what it is: It's a government-funded supply.
My colleague raised a good point about homelessness and addiction and services that are or are not available. You often wonder which came first, the addiction or the homelessness, the homelessness or the addiction. We could argue that for days here.
The one thing, though, that we, as Conservatives, wish to bring forward, of course—which is intimately and integrally related—is the issue of the government supply of hydromorphone on the streets. We know very clearly, as my colleague mentioned, that many addiction medicine experts out there are absolutely and totally against this concept. What I'd like to outline this evening for everyone, and for the millions of people out there who have joined us, are the words that should bookend the story that I'll tell in the middle. They're the words of addiction medicine specialists who talk about safer supply.
I want to read this letter from a physician referenced by my colleague. His name is Robert Cooper. I asked him for permission to use this.
This is an email to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. It says that, on a daily basis, they are seeing opioid-dependent patients relapsing on inexpensive and widely available diverted hydromorphone from safe supply programs, and his colleague presented some pictures of pill bottles from safer supply programs. He says that they are seeing this lead back to fentanyl use and then to overdose deaths. They are seeing many people with no history of opioid dependency starting new addictions with diverted hydromorphone.”
Here with are with this lame idea—I'll come to why I called it a lame idea—that giving people free drugs will suddenly help them not be addicted. It's not just free drugs; it's also free drugs in a unsupervised manner. We certainly know from significant clinical use of opioid agonist therapy, which is the supervised reduction by a health care professional in the amount of opioid that an individual is using, can be beneficial in the treatment of opioid use disorder. I think everyone would agree that makes sense, but to give people an opioid....
Do you know what? I've probably said this at this committee before. I know I've said it in the House of Commons. People will often look at a pill, such as an eight-milligram pill of hydromorphone, and say, “It's just a pill. It's the size of an Advil or a Tylenol. How bad could it possibly be for people?” We know that it is incredibly potent. I'll come back to its potency when we continue on with this sad tale.
The letter from Dr. Cooper goes on to say—and this is bolded, colleagues—that this is not harm reduction; it is harm, and this is not safe supply; it is reckless supply. This is a reckless way to go about trying to.... I don't know what the original intent was. I hope the original intent was to try to help folks with opioid use disorder, but when you have experts in the field out there ringing the alarm bells loudly and repeatedly, then I would suggest that this government, which appears to be hell-bent for leather on continuing safe supply for unknown reasons....
Why do we say that? We had the former minister of mental health and addictions here. I can remember very clearly talking about dosages of fentanyl. When we talked about dosages of fentanyl, we talked about how, in this decriminalization experiment, for personal use you could have 2.5 grams of fentanyl. We know very clearly that if we were to work in an emergency room, perhaps to do a reduction of a dislocated shoulder, you might get 100 micrograms of fentanyl. We're talking here about 2.5 grams of fentanyl. I said that was enough to treat 25,000 people, and the retort from the minister at that time was related to saying that it was always cut with something.
Do you know what? I looked at what the Government of Canada website has to say about fentanyl. It's quite fascinating. This is what the Government of Canada website says about fentanyl: “Fentanyl is a very potent opioid pain reliever. A few grains can be enough to kill you.” That's a few grains, and we have the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions suggesting that 2.5 grams is an okay amount to have for personal use.
The website continues, “Fentanyl is usually used in a hospital setting. A doctor can also prescribe it to help control severe pain.” Yada yada yada—here we are, continuing this fight. People ask why we're now interrupting a study on pandemic prevention and preparedness. First of all, it's mainly because this topic is killing Canadians. If we as a health committee are not seized with that, and we as the opposition are not seized with calling out a government that is clearly doing the wrong thing and allowing the death of its own citizens, such that there is now a framework for people with addictions to be able to kill themselves by medical assistance in dying....
Not only is this Liberal government wanting to kill Canadians who have depression. They now want to kill Canadians who have addictions. Is that simply because it's easier? Is that easier than treating them? They're trying to kill them now by giving them an amount of opioids for free in a “safer supply” program. Now we are going to have a society based on a framework endorsed by this government—