Madam Chair, I agree with my friend that there are not enough treatment facilities. On Vancouver Island, there are no tier-four beds for youth with mental health issues and addictions. In the province of B.C., there is not one tier-five bed. It is a huge problem for us.
We know that over 4,000 Canadians died last year. These preventable deaths have now surpassed the total number of deaths from all public health emergencies in the last 20 years, including SARS, H1N1 and Ebola.
We had an opioid summit in Port Alberni, and we heard from our medical health officers. They said that they believe that addiction should be treated as a health issue, not criminalized. Talking to RCMP officers, they say that we are not going to arrest our way out of this problem. We have to take a different approach.
At the association of Vancouver Island municipalities, we heard from all four medical health officers, and they all agreed on one thing. They wanted to see us take the Portugal model and decriminalize all drugs.
Does my colleague agree that if the Liberal government was really listening to our medical health officers who are dealing with this issue on the ground, it would look at treatment and decriminalization and a holistic approach, as Portugal has done? It had the highest number of overdose deaths in the EU, and now it has the lowest.