Mr. Chair, I would like to thank my colleague from Essex. I would like to thank all of my colleagues in this place who have spoken tonight.
As a lawyer, I want to reiterate what my colleague said earlier. The law defines a national emergency as “an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that (a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province....”
We have not heard any rational response from the government this evening as to why it does not see this crisis of 10,000 Canadians who have been killed by an opioid overdose, or why it does not think that this is a situation where we should be calling for a national health emergency and triggering every conceivable mechanism available at all levels of government.