Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This should come as no surprise to our colleagues. As you know, the clerk distributed my motion on Monday afternoon to meet the notice period.
At this time I'd like to move my motion on the opioid crisis:
That, given the recent study from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences Western and Lawson Health Research Institute revealing a lack of housing can influence people’s patterns of substance abuse, the committee recognize: (a) the correlation between homelessness and increased opioid deaths, (b) that, while opioid deaths in Ontario increased two-fold over a four-year timeframe, deaths among the unhoused saw a nearly four-fold increase, (c) that people experiencing homelessness accounted for one in 14 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2017 and one in six deaths in 2021; that the committee call on the government to make access to low-barrier housing a central strategy in its efforts to address the opioid epidemic; and that the committee report this motion to the House.
Mr. Chair, if my colleagues can't guess by now, I take this issue very seriously and, to be honest, I don't doubt the motivation of our colleagues either. As I started to say, and before I was cut off a number of times last meeting, I have enjoyed the support—and the partnership, if you will, up to a certain point—from our other opposition parties in calling on this government to declare the opioid epidemic a national health crisis.
Last week, researchers at Western University in London, Ontario, released the findings of a study on the link between opioid deaths and the lack of housing. I'm shocked at the results. I'll repeat the statistics: Homeless Ontarians accounted for one in six opioid-related deaths in 2021, a staggering rise from the one in 14 in 2017.
Allow me to read briefly about the study for a moment:
In one of the first reports to track the continuous increase in opioid-related mortality in the province among people experiencing homelessness, researchers found that the quarterly proportion of opioid-related overdose deaths among unhoused individuals increased from 7.2%...in the period of between July and September 2017 to 16.8%...between April and June 2021.
“On average, that's one homeless individual losing their life to an opioid overdose every day...,” said lead author Richard Booth....
“Unhoused people are overrepresented among opioid-related deaths, and the situation has reached a critical point following the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic....
That is why I tried so hard to mention this during our last meeting.
We know the statistics show that there are 22 deaths per day in Canada related to overdose—and those are the statistics that we know. When I'm talking about suicide, the rates of suicide or attempted suicides in our country, I always caution that these are the statistics that we know. Like mental illness and deaths by suicide, there is such a stigma attached to addictions. These are only the deaths that are reported, only the deaths that we know of. There are so many more that go unreported.
My Liberal and NDP colleagues can no longer ignore this issue. We've been pushing for some time now to move up this committee's study on the opioid epidemic, but all my colleagues on the other side of the table want to do is shut down this debate. I'm curious as to why my colleagues are so afraid to discuss this topic.
I've been very raw and very—