Madam Speaker, I was speaking about the policies that we had in place up to the time of Brian Mulroney and Paul Martin, when we had investments in public housing. We were then told the great lie of Paul Martin, who delivered that lie with a straight face, that the private sector would step up and build all the housing we need. It did not happen and people began to fall through the cracks. How did that lead to where we are today? It was a slow-moving hurricane. Slowly, year by year, the housing crisis and the homeless crisis got worse, to the point we are at today, where 235,000 Canadians face homelessness.
That was the first part of the undermining of our communities. The second part was the opioid crisis. We know that it started with Purdue Pharma and the licensing of OxyContin, which was first licenced in the mid- to late 1990s in Canada, despite the fact that there was a massive increase in opioid per pill. It should have been in a restricted category but it was not. Why was OxyContin so key? It was not until about 2008 or 2009 that we began to see serious devastation in our communities. That was 10 years into the opioid crisis in Kentucky and West Virginia, with mass lawsuits being launched against the predatory practices of Purdue Pharma after its 10-year track record of abusing this supposed medicine.
The government at the time, under Stephen Harper, paid no attention to what was coming over the border. I remember that in 2008-09, people were beginning to get addicted. People going to the doctor because they had a wrist problem and people who went to the dentist for wisdom teeth were being given OxyContin. We began to see people becoming addicted who would never have been addicted before. People did not go on the streets and get heroin in our little communities, but they got OxyContin and became addicted. By the time the federal government stepped up and banned OxyContin, which was around 2011-12, we already had a massive problem of opioid addiction across demographics that had never suffered something like this before.
That is when fentanyl came in. I remember the very first fentanyl death in our region. I remember that young man; I remember his family. We were so unprepared, because, again, there was nobody at the federal government level at the time, under Stephen Harper, paying attention to what fentanyl was doing.
At this stage, we have had over 21,000 opioid deaths in just the last four years. It has cut through every community in our country. Every community has suffered. We have a rising homeless population and have a rising addiction problem. Fentanyl and the other drugs that come with it have created an incredibly destabilized situation at a time when government was walking away from mental health services and at a time when government was not there for the people who needed supports.
That leads us to the crisis of the abandonment of mental health and basic programs, the opioid crisis and the inability to get people into safe housing, many of them in the population aimed at by the gangs that have become increasingly violent and dangerous. We need a strategy that addresses this and we do not have a strategy. What we get from the Conservatives are bumper sticker slogans. They say they are going to fight the crime.
Then there is what we have heard again and again in testimony. Myron Demkiw, chief of police of the Toronto Police Service, talked about the need for safe supply and wraparound services. The member who lives in the big house Stornoway has been lighting gasoline fires all over the opioid crisis in all our communities, claiming that safe supply means the Prime Minister is giving out drugs on the street, which is an absolute falsehood. We do not need slogans and incendiary language. We need solutions. We need to keep people alive. That is number one. We also need to give the police the tools to go after predatory gangs.
Something that I have not heard from the Liberals is the ability to target the gangs who are coming in, and to get them out. It is certainly one of the issues that has been raised to me in the first nations communities of the north. People want the ability to police and protect their communities. When someone suddenly comes into a fly-in community, who has never been there before and is selling fentanyl, community leaders want the power to say, “Buddy, you are out the door; we are not even going to let you off the plane.”
In fly-in communities in the north, we can get on a plane to get into Fort Albany or Attawapiskat or Neskantaga with our bag, and we can be carrying as much fentanyl as we want. We cannot get on an Air Canada plane with a bag without being searched. What I have heard in Treaty 9 is that people want Transport Canada to give them the authority that if someone is flying into one of the fly-in communities they have to go through security searches so that they are not carrying guns and fentanyl. This is a straightforward thing. It is about keeping people safe.
I want to be able to go home to the communities that I represent and tell police officers who have done 35 years of service in small-town Canada that they can go home at the end of the day and be safe. I want to tell our frontline workers that when they go out on a call, they should not need a flak jacket; they should not need two OPP cruisers outside the door because there are predatory gangs who have taken over that housing complex. That is the reality in small-town Canada, and solutions are not being talked about; what is being talked about are the excuses.
One of the things that I find very concerning is that my Conservative colleagues' solutions only work if we all live by the fact of having no memory. I remember when Vic Toews was the minister of public safety. Some members may not remember Vic Toews. He was convicted of violating the Elections Canada Act. That is a black mark and Stephen Harper made him pretty much top of the justice department anyway. He brought in the legislation that was going to force telecoms to create backdoor routes into every Canadian cellphone so he could spy on them. The Conservatives accuse this Prime Minister of spying on Canadians. This Prime Minister is an absolute amateur compared to what Vic Toews was going to do, which was a total violation of civil liberties of every single Canadian so he could listen in on their phone calls. That same Vic Toews, of course, then was found guilty of breaking conflict of interest guidelines for hustling gigs for groups that were “seeking relief against a decision in which he had been involved as a minister of the Crown.” Let us talk about dodgy.
I mention Vic Toews because he also stood in the House one day and accused the opposition members that they were either on the Conservatives' side or the side of the child pornographers. This was at a time when he was cutting 1,100 jobs from border security. They were the people whose job it was to keep out fentanyl gangs, guns, predators and child pornographers. Let us remember that Jean-Pierre Fortin, who was the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, stated that because of what the Harper government was doing on cutting border security, “more child pornography entering the country, more weapons, illegal drugs will pass through our borders, not to mention terrorists, and sexual predators and hardened criminals.” That does not fit on a bumper sticker, but that was the fact and that was the reality of what the current Liberal government inherited because of the Harper cuts. Vic Toews, at the time, said that was all fearmongering.
Vic Toews cut the intelligence unit on border security in half. How were we going to defend ourselves against international criminal gangs when he cut the intelligence service? He cut the sniffer-dog teams. That is a no-brainer. Sniffer-dog teams are not all that expensive, but sniffer-dog teams will tell us where the drugs are. Stephen Harper did not care. He fired those people because it was going to save some money.
Therefore, when the Conservatives say that they would get tough on the crime and they would take on the blah-blah, let us remember what they did. Let us remember how they cut the police crime prevention programs that helped communities support themselves so that they could keep the gangs out and support their communities.
Let us remember Tony Clement. There was $50 million in border security that he hoovered into his personal office to give out. What did he do?
He paid for a sunken boat. That was not a good use of money. There were the Muskoka gazebos; he was building gazebos all over the rural parts of his riding. He built a fake lake. Muskoka has the most beautiful lakes in the country, except for those in Timmins—James Bay. There was Tony Clement. The lakes were not good enough. He had to create a fake lake. I remember Steamboat Tony. He was another one who went down in ethical flames.
We are not even going to go through all the famous dark ethical violations of the Harper government. I mention Tony Clement because Stephen Harper thought it was a great idea to take money for border security to keep Canadians safe and give it to Tony Clement to buy sunken boats in Muskoka. Imagine what is going to happen under the guy who is living in Stornoway, if he ever gets in.
The other thing that I find really concerning is we have these serious issues of gun violence and gangs that we have to focus on. The Liberals have dropped the ball a thousand times on these issues. I want to be able to go home to Northern Ontario and tell our frontline workers and families who are suffering from addictions that they can be safe, and that our communities are never going to be bases for this kind of violence.
I cannot assure them of that now, and it worries me. It worries me when I have seen what is happening to communities that have always had each other's backs and have looked out for each other. Communities cannot do it on their own. If we talk to the municipalities anywhere in the north about the homeless crisis, they are going to say, “Where's the federal government?” When we talk to the communities about the opioid crisis, they are going to say that what the member who lives in Stornoway has been saying is like pouring gasoline on their efforts of keeping people alive.
If we talk to the police in Timmins or the OPP, they are going to say that we cannot arrest our way out of this crisis. It is complex. I am proud of the people on the front lines in my region, like the Mushkegowuk Fire Keepers who walk the streets of Timmins to keep people alive and safe. That is a program we initiated in Timmins—James Bay. It should be a national program, in the indigenous urban regions, people on the streets keeping people safe. They deserve better than this political Punch and Judy show.
Rather than talking about these issues, this morning the Conservatives were talking about Grandpa Bill's hunting rifle. That is a total falsehood. I am a gun owner. My wife is a gun owner. Imagine the member for Stornoway out in the bush. He is saying, “They're going after your turkey gun.” No, they are not.
The government is going after the assault weapons that have killed people. It is going to go after handguns that are coming over the border. In the latest falsehoods, from the guy who used pictures of Serbia and Malaysia as Canada, and hunters from Oklahoma, they said they were going to defend Pa and Joe Jr. going out with their orange hats. That is a total falsehood. We have freaking fentanyl gangs in our communities that need to be dealt with. The government is not going after Grandpa Joe.
That is the misinformation that is coming from the Conservatives. The Liberals, with their Punch and Judy show, do not even remember how to punch anymore. I need to be able to go home to our communities and say that we will keep people safe, we will keep families alive and we will restore balance with those wraparound services that the police have talked about.
