Mr. Chair, the article reads:
What are Canadian government bodies doing about diversion? As it turns out, very little.
I emailed a list of diversion-related questions to Health Canada, B.C.'s Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and Ontario's Ministry of Health....
...both the B.C. government and Health Canada replied. Neither answered my two simple yes-or-no questions, either ignoring or deflecting them.
It continues:
Health Canada didn't mention any additional anti-diversion measures in its email, but said that it will “monitor and assess available information” and “take appropriate action where necessary.”
I emailed Health Canada's response to over 10 addiction physicians. Those who replied were uniformly critical of the agency's recommendations, which they called “inadequate” and “puzzling.” According to Dr. Lam, Health Canada seemed to be “significantly out of touch with the realities of opioid use disorder and the market for illicit substances, which is concerning.”
It's concerning, indeed, Mr. Chair. Clearly if Health Canada can't even articulate a strategy to mitigate safer supply diversion, their government overlords have no inkling of how to address this crisis either.
The article continues:
To Health Canada's credit, at least it drafted a personalized response. When B.C.'s Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions replied, it simply referred me to two documents produced by the [British Columbia Centre on Substance Use]....
Several addiction physicians I spoke with said that both they and their colleagues who work on the front lines generally believe that the BCCSU's guidelines, which are tremendously influential in Canadian addiction policymaking, fail to address the potential risks or harms of safer supply.
Echoing his colleagues, Dr. Kahan said that, “Health Canada and B.C. government, researchers, public health officials and harm-reduction advocates have ignored these concerns and given funding and uncritical support for safer supply.”
Then it says:
The addiction physicians I have spoken with have consistently claimed that the BCCSU uses inadequate research to support safer supply. This includes three former BCCSU staff members who spoke on a condition of anonymity, for fear of career repercussions.
Mr. Chair, enough is enough: enough stonewalling, enough sidestepping, enough adjourning debate. The opioid epidemic is not an issue we can run from. There are lives at stake. Addressing this crisis is infinitely more important than partisanship.
This Liberal-NDP government must end its funding and support for these so-called safe supply programs now or else pay them the attention they deserve and fix them. Clearly the current system is broken. For the sake of our kids, our communities and our country, this committee needs to give the opioid crisis the care and attention that it deserves immediately.
Mr. Chair, I talked at length regarding these challenges and these reports that we're seeing and hearing. It seems as though every day, honestly, you cannot turn on the news or look at social media.... Well, maybe not social media anymore because you can't get news on there.
I don't know about my colleagues, but whether it's in my social media inbox, in comments on posts, in my email or in phone calls over at my office, we have so many stories of yet another death related to opioids or fentanyl.
At one point, Mr. Chair, I spoke of this young player who I coached. His name was Chad Staley.
Hopefully that wasn't a heavy sigh from across the way about hearing yet another story from me.
Chad was an outstanding—outstanding—hockey player, community member and teammate. He was a young boy from Kennewick, Washington, I believe. When he came to our team to play as a junior for our team, he was just wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and a true leader on and off the ice. That translated into success both on and off the ice. He had an NCAA scholarship.
I believe it was in the second year of his scholarship that he was playing in a hockey game and injured himself. On the bus ride back to his campus, I believe it was, he was in so much pain that one of his teammates gave him a pill, what they thought was like a T3, Tylenol with codeine. Chad put it in his pocket and went back to his home. At one point, the pain was so much that he took the pill. That pill was laced with fentanyl. You can imagine the shock and the horror of his parents who found their child—not a drug addict, not a drug user—passed away.
That story is replayed over and over again. Maybe it's not a hockey player. Maybe it's not somebody with a scholarship but a blue-collar worker, or a president or a vice-president of a university in our province, or two professionals on the island, a husband and wife, taking recreational drugs, who died of an overdose from fentanyl. With my motion I've been talking about the increasing rate of deaths attributed to overdose in our homeless population.
Last week, I talked about that. If you don't believe me, we at least should believe the 17 leading experts in addiction medicine: Dr. Mel Kahan, medical director for META:PHI and co-chair of the methadone treatment and services advisory committee; Dr. Robert Cooper, who served on the board of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine and was chair of the OMA section on addiction medicine; Dr. Paul Farnan, in the field of occupational medicine and addiction medicine for over 25 years and clinical associate professor in the department of family practice, University of British Columbia; Dr. Michael Lester, physician assessor for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and secretary for the OMA section on addiction medicine for 13 years; Jennifer Melamed, who served on the board of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine; Launette Rieb, clinical associate professor, University of British Columbia, and a physician certified in addiction medicine; Maire Durnin-Goodman, who has extensive experience in managing addiction disorders; Dr. Ray Baker, clinical professor at UBC who served on the board of the American Society of Addiction Medicine; Dr. Harry Vedelago, chief of the addiction medicine service, Homewood Health Centre; Dr. Alan Brookstone, addiction medicine and family physician with over 30 years of clinical experience; Dr. Clement Sun, founder of ACT Addiction Clinics; Dr. Oded Samuel, with over 25 years' experience in the field of addiction medicine; and Dr. Annabel Mead, medical director at B.C. Women's Hospital and Correctional Health Services, with 20 years' experience in concurrent disorders, pain, women's health and youth addictions.
A lot of people said a lot of things, both good and bad, regarding my intervention last week. As I said before, if you don't believe me, believe the people who are the experts. All I'm saying is that we have to be better, as I've said from the very first day I came to this committee or any other committee. Those who have been here as long as I've been elected know that I always challenge us to be better when it comes to these issues and that I truly believe we can leave a legacy of action, not inaction. That's where I come from on this. I shared my personal story not to gain sympathy or get likes on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other social media. It's just to say that I don't have the answers. I know we can be better.
Our family lives it each and every day. I appreciate all those who have come to me and shared their personal stories regarding loved ones and their own family challenges with addictions and mental health. It truly is one of the toughest things to do, especially given this role we're in: being raw and vulnerable and sharing that. I did not expect to be that emotional last week when I shared that story. It's something we live with each and every day. I expected it to be...but the reality is that I get frustrated. I get angry when we're sitting with these families—not just mine—that are crying and asking us to do something, and we're powerless. We're powerless to stop this drug from coming onto our streets, communities and country. For eight years, I've listened to a government say we need to do better and be better, yet here we are still struggling with this. The issue is not going away. It's not getting better. It's getting worse.
It's amplified by programs such as safe supply. I will be the first to agree that there are many tools in the tool box. It's not one-size-fits-all. However, this is not working. It's causing more problems—a whole new wave of opioid addictions among our youth and young adults. It's plaguing our streets and nothing is being done. We just go merrily on our way.
I honestly wish we could have a conversation around the table with the cameras on. We have expertise on all sides, and I know they've experienced this in their professional lives. However, I know what will happen. Somebody from the other side will move to adjourn the debate, rather than have an actual debate. I bet there's something going on right now. Somebody is saying, “The Conservatives are filibustering again and not letting our colleague's private member's bill go through. The Conservatives are up to no good once again.”
The chair is nodding his head. After all I've said, I get that reaction. It's disappointing, Mr. Chair. I know you to be a good person, but it is disappointing. Shake your head again all you want. It's disappointing. It truly is.
Why can't we have a conversation about this? Why can't we do something about this?
I believe there are good people on all sides of the House. I know it to be true because we have sidebar conversations with people from all parties who say they feel exactly the same, yet when we come through those doors or we go into the House, common sense goes out the door.
I'm eight years into this job. I haven't been here long enough to be jaded, although it may sound like it. I truly believe there are good people on all sides, but if you aren't willing to fight for our most vulnerable, what are you willing to fight for? Why are you here? Truly. Why are you here?
We're sent here with a mandate to listen to Canadians, to fight for Canadians and to make lives better for Canadians. I guarantee that each and every one of our colleagues was asked, when they were running for nomination and they were asking people to vote for them for their nomination, “Are you going to toe the party line? If this issue is really important to me and your constituents, how are you going to vote?” You can hear the echo of the whip crack.
Aren't committees supposed to be the masters of their own destiny? That's what I hear from the Liberals all the time: “I had nothing to do with it. Committees are free to do whatever they want.” If we're free to do whatever we want, let's do the study.
Their heads are down. They're checking their emails, texting, shaking their heads and laughing.
Committees—