I appreciate your comments, Mr. Chair. Now I have to find where I left off.
I referenced an article earlier on diversion, and the title tells the story: “Astonishing amounts of government-supplied opioids found for sale on Reddit”.
Mr. Chair, for my colleague in the NDP, when we are talking about the drugs that are being found on Reddit, these are drugs that are coming from those who are homeless. These are addicts who live on the street. They are taking the government-funded safe supply and they are selling it to dealers who are then in turn selling it, or they're selling it to kids in schoolyards and perpetuating this problem. They're taking the money they make from that and buying fentanyl for the higher and stronger high.
Any of it, Mr. Chair, is absolutely appalling.
What we're seeing is people getting free drugs from the government. Then, instead of taking them as the so-called safe supply program intends, they sell them on the street or online in places like Reddit, in the back alleys of our streets or in the schoolyards. Then they take the money from the sale of the government-provided drugs and they purchase stronger drugs from the street to get the fix.
I'd like to reiterate a portion of the article from Monday. I'm not sure if my colleagues from across the table were paying attention at that time:
If you want evidence that Canada's experimental “safer supply” drug programs have been a disaster, all you need to do is open your laptop [or your cellphone] and visit Reddit, a popular social media platform. Until very recently, if you knew which keywords to use, you could easily find drug traffickers openly selling tens of thousands of hydromorphone pills....
Many of them are still in the same prescription bottles and safe supply bags that they were given in and “clearly originated from Canadian safer supply programs.”
I have pictures for the record, Mr. Chair, and I'll make these available if any of my colleagues have not seen them. It's shocking. If anybody hasn't seen these, these are the thousands of drugs that are being used online, and they're not just staying here within our borders. They're being shipped all over the world. It's crazy. As you can see, one drug trafficker has enough diverted hydromorphone to spell out his entire username in pills. Many photos, like this one, show the drugs diverted—still in the pill bottle from the pharmacy and from their pharmacist—to the black market, to the pockets of our neighours in the back alleys of our streets and schoolyards.
The story goes on to say:
Though [hydromorphone] had once been scarce and expensive on the black market, that changed dramatically when Canadian safer supply programs began flooding communities with it in 2020.
These programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by distributing free hydromorphone, an opiod as potent as heroin, as an alternative to potentially tainted illicit substances. However, addiction experts have said that, as hydromorphone generally does not get fentanyl users high, recipients routinely resell (“divert”) their safe supply on the black market. This has caused the drug's street price to collapse by up to 95 per cent in some markets and fuelled new addictions, including among teenagers.
I have also presented to this House that the leading cause of death for youth aged 10 to 18 in my province of British Columbia is overdose. To continue:
Reddit users frequently lauded safer supply for flooding the market with cheap opioids. Many of the posts selling hydromorphone had such titles as, “Check the date!! 150 dilly 8mg collected thanks to safe supply vancouver,” “Dilly heaven—I love safe supply,” “Batch of d8s, around 250 of em i love my safe supply Fr!!” and “Living in the UK getting high of(f) Canadas safe supply haha. Having family in Canada is a win win all around.”
In the comment sections of these posts, Reddit users openly discussed how safer supply recipients would sell their hydromorphone for “dirt cheap” to buy fentanyl. Drug users marvelled at how the Canadian government was giving away hydromorphone “like candy” and “throwing these f**kers around like tic tacs” and that drug dealers were buying “literally buckets” of safer supply opioids.
Mr. Chair, this is shameful. For this supposedly advanced country like Canada, this crisis is a blight on our reputation, our character and the Liberal-NDP government. People come here from all over the world because Canada is one of the greatest countries on earth. I think we can all agree with that. If we continue to hand out free drugs like candy, we're going to turn into a laughingstock instead, if we aren't one already.
So-called safe supply just isn't working. Many of these folks just aren't taking them. They're selling government drugs and buying more dangerous drugs that get them more high, drugs that are often toxic and are killing them. At the very least, these dangerous drugs like hydromorphone should be under stricter controls. Methadone, for instance, an opioid agonist that is used to treat opioid use disorder, is usually dispensed at a pharmacy under the watch of a pharmacist, but these so-called safe supply programs can't even do that, Mr. Chair. These programs are nothing short of an abject failure.
I also brought forth the fact that in my province of British Columbia we have pop-up stores that sell crack, methadone, cocaine and these pills. Our streets are littered with people who are hurting, and we're perpetuating their addiction. We can't get a roof over their heads and we can't get them into recovery, but we can give them free drugs.
I was talking with somebody who has a substance abuse problem, who watched our health committee on this last week. He lives on the streets and he said that when his friends who are alcoholics were trying to curb their alcoholism, they had absolutely no alcohol. This person is addicted to drugs, yet we still give them drugs because those are not as strong as the drugs they're addicted to.
What frustrates me is that this should not be a partisan issue. It's very simple. At the last committee I was approached at the food table and asked what it would take for us to end this, to stop doing what we're doing. I think all of us know what it would take. Let's get to work on trying to find solutions to this.
It's very simple. This is about protecting our communities from being flooded with cheap, government-funded drugs. It's about protecting those who are the most vulnerable, those who don't have a home to go to at the end of the night, the youth who don't have the life experience and who don't know what they're getting themselves into, or it's about the blue-collar worker. In my province, stories come out about those who are in our most marginalized communities, but you also hear stories about blue-collar workers who are working in camps, who start off with recreational drugs. You can't even tell what is in a joint anymore, apparently.
I was speaking with an RCMP officer and he said that they found a bag of marijuana and it was laced with fentanyl, so these kids and these people who are going to whatever parties or what have you think they're just taking these harmless drugs. For those who are on the street who are looking for that next high, they have no idea what it is they're taking or how potent it is.
When we did the emergency debate on opioids last year, or a couple of years ago, the study I read into the record said that it's as easy as ordering a book on Amazon to get a kilogram of fentanyl. That's a kilogram of fentanyl, when something the size of a grain of sand could kill people.
I know our physician colleagues across the way could probably tell the ratio and the amount that is needed to put somebody under for surgery or to use it in the treatment of pain, but these are trained professionals. The people on the street have no idea what they're getting.
I went to an event in the summer. I was driving a friend of mine from an event to another event, and just outside our homeless shelter, as we were driving by, we witnessed somebody being thrown out of a vehicle. As I do, I stopped and tried to administer first aid. This young man, 20 years of age or 19 years of age, pants around his ankles, was literally tossed lifeless, like a castaway, onto the street. He had been in this vehicle, which turned out to be stolen, and the occupants of the vehicle had taken a hit of whatever it was and he was in overdose.
It was shocking for me that one of his friends on the street, another homeless gentleman, knew immediately what to do and was calling for the other people gathered around on the street for naloxone or Narcan. He administered the shots to him. By the time the ambulance got there, we had given four shots and he wasn't revived at that time. I was doing what I could, but it was shocking to see this. I don't know the name of what was in it, but the ambulance attendants who came said they were seeing more and more powerful stuff. Benzos are also laced into it, I think. I don't even know what that is. They said it was making it harder to bring these people back from the overdose.
Going back to my brother, my brother has overdosed so many times that it takes more and more Narcan to bring him back from his overdoses. He apparently has black marks on his brain that cause seizures now and what have you. I don't wish any of this on anybody.
I apologize for getting emotional last week, but the number of people I've sat with, the number of families I've sat with.... I also do outreach on the streets and in my community. I know we're all good people and we all sign up to do better. Sadly, it seems that partisan politics have taken over, when many of us know better and we know we should be doing something.
This is about making sure that our kids and loved ones don't become addicts. Far too often, by the time they're addicted, it's too late. The addiction has a hold on them. We need to have policies aimed at preventing the spread of harmful and deadly opioids through our streets. We need to be working on ways to get people the treatment they so desperately need, not perpetuating their addictions and creating more addicts in the process.
Mr. Chair, I want to continue with the article on the safer supply pilot project at the LIHC. It reads:
LIHC's safer supply program doesn't just provide free hydromorphone - it also gives patients comprehensive wrap-around supports. That includes an array of health and social services, as well as access to an interdisciplinary team that provides counselling, housing support and social services.
The study provided no evidence showing that the provision of hydromorphone, and not the plethora of accompanying supports, were the cause of positive outcomes.
...addiction physicians said that this kind of oversight, wherein the benefits of wraparound supports appear to be misattributed to safer supply drugs, is common in the harm reduction world.
“The quality of the science is very poor,” said Dr. Regenstreif, who also noted that the LIHC evaluations showed that some patients had dropped out of the program, but that no information was given about what happened to them. By failing to investigate these outcomes, safer supply programs can misleadingly reduce their death count—patients don't die, they just disappear.
As we know from the homelessness challenges we have, these are the unaccounted for. These are people who, for many reasons, whatever reasons.... Some on their own choose to live on the streets. Some choose, for whatever reasons.... Some just don't have the opportunity. However, when they drop out of these programs, there's no recording on this.
Dr. Regenstreif said that, in general, many drug-related deaths are simply not counted if they are caused by something other than an overdose.
“If you're injecting fentanyl and then get a heart infection, or you die of something else related to drug injection while in hospital, that doesn't get counted as a coroner's case,” she said. “It's not necessarily considered a drug-related death. It's not being included with the overdose numbers. And the epidemiologists don't seem to be aware of this.”
I hope that my colleagues across the way are paying close attention to this, Mr. Chair, and continue to pay attention as I read this next section, which is deeply disturbing. It says:
At least four addiction physicians I spoke to...have witnessed, first-hand, that evidence which contradicts the narrative around safer supply is often dismissed.
In some cases, doctors say they are pressure to ignore harms. Dr. Regenstreif described being left out of important meetings, research activities and conversations after raising concerns about safer supply.
Dr. Violet used to work at a B.C.-based institution that is associated with safer supply. As an addiction physician with a research background, the doctor asked to analyze the institute's safer supply data, in order to track unintended consequences and potential harms.
“The request was met with hostility. They set up meetings with other stakeholders and I very quickly got the sense that this was not welcomed,” said Dr. Violet. The institution refused to share its data, [she] says, and claimed that it already had plans to measure the potential harms of safer supply, but could not describe what those plans were.
There was a “very clear warning” that Dr. Violet's job security was at risk by pursuing research that could reflect poorly on safer supply. “It was quite clear to me that they did not want any outsiders to take part in their work. I'm not the only physician whose interest in this area has been met with opposition and challenges,” said Dr. Violet.
After that incident, Dr. Violet found work elsewhere.
Mr. Chair, what are these organizations hiding? What is this Liberal-NDP government covering up? Could it be that they know that their so-called safer supply policies are a disaster for Canadians, yet still choose the politically expedient route instead of prioritizing Canadians' lives? It really is troubling, and it is a disgrace.
I'll return to the same article, which goes on to discuss government inaction.
Mr. Chair, I have a few pages left. Maybe we might want to dismiss our guests, or do you want me to get through this and then...?
