Thank you.
I do appreciate the comments from my colleague. I appreciate your deliberations on this as well, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, we have been pushing this, obviously, and raising points of order and motions on studying this. I appreciate that there have been discussions about the calendar, but there are reports coming out about how this epidemic is increasing. It is becoming more and more prevalent. It should raise alarms with all of us around this table.
There are obvious precedents in other committees in which the calendar that was decided upon and agreed upon by all parties has been changed, and there are topics, bills, legislation, motions and what have you that have been bumped up the order of precedence.
I guess the question I have is whether our colleagues are in denial that there is an epidemic in the first place. Are they afraid the so-called safe supply policies will be exposed to Canadians in a public committee? I said it last week and I'll say it again: This government needs to do better. We all need to do better. Thousands of Canadians are suffering each and every day from this opioid crisis. This study, the ICES study, confirms what we already know and what we have been saying for months now, if not years—that the government is failing to protect the most vulnerable of Canadians.
We're talking about people dying. It's not something we can ignore for a minute longer. These people who are addicted to these drugs, the homeless people on our streets, are dying. We can't ever bring these lives back. We can't give them a second chance. We cannot keep pushing back this study and adjourning debate whenever opioids are brought up. It is a difficult conversation. Sometimes doing the difficult task, while not easy, is the right thing to do.
Canadians expect better from this government. This crisis is touching people from all walks of life across our nation. We have this crisis, this opioid crisis, this fentanyl crisis. As I mentioned in my last intervention on this, it impacts folks from all corners of society. We have a duty to protect the lives and livelihoods of each and every person in our country, whether they are a homeless person or whether they are a blue-collar worker who is addicted to opioids. Our homeless population doesn't have a roof over their heads, but many have served our country. Many, for whatever reason, have fallen into despair. Canada is still their home. Our country is still their home. Surely my colleagues across the table must agree.
Maybe they need more convincing. Let me quote again from the article on the study:
While opioid overdose deaths in the province increased two-fold over the four-year timeframe, deaths among the unhoused saw nearly a four-fold increase.
Unhoused individuals who died were often younger (61.3%...between [the ages of] 25 and 44 years)...and were more likely to have recently accessed health-care services for mental health or substance use disorders, compared to housed individuals who died.
We know the Liberals and the NDP are politically invested in the success or perceived success of so-called safe supply policies, but surely they can put their partisanship aside for the good of Canadians. I've asked this so many times in the House when talking about mental health and addictions and suicide prevention: Why can't all parties come to an agreement that this crisis demands the attention of this committee now—not in a few weeks or a month or next year, but right now?
We can't afford to wait any longer with the lives at stake.
The article goes on. It says, “Lack of housing can influence people's patterns of substance use, which can introduce considerable risk for people accessing Ontario's highly potent...illicit drug supply” and “Access to low-barrier housing should be a central strategy”.
Mr. Chair, will the Liberal-NDP coalition listen to these calls to action? As we've seen in this committee in recent weeks, it's proving nearly impossible for them to even acknowledge the crisis at all. How can Canadians trust that this government will heed the calls of these experts?
Since I tabled my motion last week, there has been an outpouring of messages from families and loved ones who have lost children. One wrote to me about their 14-year-old and thanked me for the work we're doing here. We've done nothing. All we've done is raise the issue. I said that to them, that we've just raised the issue, but we have given them hope that something will be done.
It is likely that the Liberals and NDP will simply claim that their so-called safe supply policies need to be ramped up to address this issue. It's unbelievable to me how they can stand behind such policies while they continue to ignore and offer no solutions to the massive and very real problem of diversion. I met with the minister last week, and I raised this issue. Let's just say that the conversation wasn't as fruitful as I had hoped.
Mr. Chair, we need to act now. We need to put the brakes on this opioid epidemic before thousands more Canadians are killed. The government needs to act immediately to keep our streets safe and to start getting addicts into recovery, instead of perpetuating their tragic and deadly addictions. The reality is that this so-called safe supply is anything but safe.
I have here the special report from the National Post called “Drug fail: The Liberal government's 'safer supply' is fuelling a new opioid crisis”. This is the one that I tried introducing to this committee on Monday, yet it was not permitted. I'll read from it:
Last December, Health Minister Carolyn Bennett in an opinion article for the National Post, praised safer supply and defended the federal government's commitment to the program. In Bennett's fairy-tale world, there are no concerns about diversion, rising addictions or debilitating infections. The minister also skipped over the fact that, according to the government's own research, many participants of safer supply programs continue to abuse fentanyl because hydromorphone doesn't get them high.
Indeed, we've heard that testimony here.
Bennett cited the LIHC safer supply pilot project in London as a “particularly notable” example of success. According to the health minister, the program has seen zero overdose deaths. Yet [addiction specialist] Dr. Koivu says she's had patients who are enrolled in the LIHC safer supply program and ended up dying of overdoses. Their exclusion from official statistics has made her deeply concerned about the quality of data being provided to the government—did this data fully capture what was happening to the program participants? “The patients I watched suffering have to matter. Their lives and experiences are important, but I feel like they've been erased”, she said.
That comment is interesting, because when I sit with families, almost to a T, the overwhelming comment we get is “Do you even care?” or “Are you even listening?” The fact that their child, their loved one, their husband, their son, their daughter, their wife, their brother, their sister, their mother or their dad is away, in their mind, now the problem is gone, but as we know the problem continues and it is only amplified.
Mr. Chair, this is the heart of the problem. At the last meeting of the committee, I started to read into the record an article on diversion. The title tells the story: “Astonishing amounts of government-supplied opioids found for sale on Reddit”. It's absolutely appalling.
What we're seeing is people getting free drugs from the government—