Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Beaches—East York for tabling the bill and reworking what he previously tabled. This is something, as Conservatives, we are open to discussing.
I do not think there is any question with anybody in the House that the opioid crisis is going to be the number one health issue this country faces in the years to come. Even when COVID is resolved, hopefully when vaccines become available to Canadians in the new year, the ramifications and implications of this pandemic and the impact it has had on Canadians is going to be long-lasting.
We have seen the opioid crisis explode to proportions I do not think any of us could have ever predicted. I look at my own province of Alberta, where the opioid overdose deaths from January to June tripled from the first quarter to the second quarter of last year. The implications of COVID and the resulting growth in the opioid crisis is a challenge that all of us as parliamentarians have to understand. We have to start addressing this with real solutions and real partnerships between the various different levels of government. This is not a partisan issue. All of us in the House want to find a way to help Canadians in their recovery.
We had a doctor from B.C. appear at the Standing Committee on Health on Monday. She talked about the opioid crisis in B.C., and B.C. is now seeing record levels of opioid overdose deaths. B.C. was certainly the epicentre of this crisis, but as my colleague from Atlantic Canada just said, we have seen this spread from one part of the country to the next. There is no segment of our population that is immune to the impacts of the opioid crisis.
I applaud my colleague for bringing this forward and taking the focus off legalizing illicit drugs. I agree with him that this is not what the bill is about. Bill C-236 is not about legalizing or decriminalizing illicit drugs. It is about putting a focus on treatment and recovery. Unfortunately, there are some things missing from this private member's bill that I think could be strengthened. If we get this to committee, I hope my colleague is open to some amendments and we can work together to strengthen the bill.
I have to chime in on the comment my colleague made about Conservative provincial governments not supporting recovery and treatment for these addictions. Premier Jason Kenney in Alberta named Jason Luan the minister of mental health and addictions, one of the first provincial governments in Canadian history to have a minister in cabinet dedicated to mental health and addictions. It has funded more than 4,000 new treatment beds in the province of Alberta alone. This is not a Conservative conspiracy in which we do not believe in treatment and recovery. My colleague is way off the mark on that.
As I said, I do not think this is a partisan issue in any way. Every government across the country at every level is struggling to find ways to deal with this with limited resources. One of the problems with my colleague's private member's bill is that it really lacks teeth and accountability.
The bill really highlights what is already happening in many jurisdictions across Canada with most police forces. The Liberal government put out a directive in 2016 asking police forces not to charge and go to the court system for simple possession, and many police forces across the country are following up on that directive. Many officers, if they are pulling someone over with a minimal amount of drugs, are not charging them and not putting them through the legal system. Therefore, what the bill does is try to formalize what is already informal across the country.
The bill does not put enough emphasis, teeth or accountability on the recovery aspect. One of the keys to the bill is that a police officer would have the discretion to allow a person who has not been charged yet to choose between two streams. The officer could take the person to a recovery centre to get treatment, but it would have to be at that person's discretion. If the person refuses, then it would be the end of the discussion. They can still potentially be charged, but there is no accountability or no mandatory option to go to recovery.
I am hoping that my colleague will be open to that amendment so that there would be some teeth and accountability in the bill, which would put the focus on a mandatory recovery and treatment element when it comes to dealing with opioid addiction.
I agree with him that this is a mental health issue, and as I said at the beginning of my speech, I think this is the biggest mental health issue this country has or will ever face. We have to find a solution or put some resources into it. I know my colleague also mentioned the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. He is right that the association does support decriminalization of illicit drugs, but with a caveat that he failed to mention.
The caveat is that there have to be resources in provinces for recovery, and in their report they say that does not exist at this time. Therefore, they really do not support decriminalization of all illicit drugs, which, again, the bill does not do, but I think it highlights that the focus needs to be on the recovery aspect, which is missing from the bill. I know my colleague has tried to step back from going all the way to decriminalization and tried to bring this to something that all of us in the House can work on as a starting point, but it still lacks some of those elements that we would like to see. As I said, in reality a lot of these things are already being done by police officers.
The other element that I hope my colleague would be open to is not about the mandatory recovery but about when an officer is having that interaction with a person. They can take notes of how many times they have had this discussion and offered a recovery option to that person, but that is not admissible, should it ever go to court. For example, if I have pulled Joe Smith over and have had this discussion with Joe Smith on multiple occasions, and on multiple occasions I have offered Joe Smith two options, to take it to the criminal justice system or to go to recovery, again the onus is on Joe Smith. If he says no, then that option is no longer viable.
However, I could have had that discussion with Joe Smith 17,000 times and there is no chance for that, but if that element was admissible, should he ever have to go through the justice system, we could say that we have had this discussion on many occasions and we have offered him the opportunity to go to recovery and he has refused over and over again. Therefore, the only option would be a criminal justice pathway. I think that needs to be an element in there.
The other aspect to this is that these drugs are dangerous. There is no question. They are killing Canadians from every walk of life, and I know many of us in the House have had personal relations or experiences with this. I know in my riding I had one first nations community that had 18 fentanyl overdose deaths in one month. I have had too many friends and acquaintances who have lost loved ones, including me: a friend I played senior hockey with for many years. I do not want to have those conversations anymore. There has to be a way to get through this, but there have to be consequences.
I understand that when someone is caught with an amount of drugs that is just for their possession, we can look at the mental health and addiction recovery, but there have to be harsh consequences for those who are peddling these drugs, the dealers who are killing those Canadians. We also have to ensure that there are hard consequences and enough resources to CBSA to ensure that we are not having these drugs, specifically fentanyl, imported into our country. With COVID, we are seeing limitations on travel, but now we are seeing an increase in poison and toxins put into these drugs here at home. There have to be consequences.
In conclusion, I am hoping my colleague will be open to amendments and having this discussion, but as this sits now it will be difficult for us to support without some of those accountability elements and the teeth to ensure focus on a mandatory element to recovery and rehabilitation.