Mr. Speaker, the numbers are in. In 2017, a staggering 4,000 Canadians died from opioid overdoses, an unprecedented 1,400 people in British Columbia alone. However, this is not an opioid crisis. It is not an overdose crisis. It is a crisis of social isolation and bad drug policy.
Jagmeet Singh has proposed the only real solution: treat addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. When will the government abandon the failed war on drugs and adopt a health-based approach to addiction and drug use?