Mr. Speaker, it is an honour today to table a petition regarding the overdose crisis and the preventable opioid overdoses resulting from fentanyl-poisoned drugs. It is timely, as we lost people in my community over the weekend to a poisoned drug supply.
The petitioners from Port Alberni are calling on the government to declare that the current overdose crisis and fentanyl poisoning crisis is a national public health emergency under the Emergencies Act in order to properly manage and resource it with the aim to reduce and eliminate preventable deaths. The petitioners want to reform drug policy to decriminalize personal possession and create, with urgency and immediacy, a system to provide safe, unadulterated access to substances so that people who use substances experimentally, recreationally or chronically are not at imminent risk of overdose because of a contaminated source.