Hedy Fry

[An Act Respecting Certain Measures Related to COVID-19, February 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, in this House we listen to partisanship constantly. We listen to people yelling at each other, calling each other names and ignoring the issue on the table just in order to be partisan. The hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway made me proud tonight. He was non-partisan. He was clear. He talked about the science. He talked about the facts. He smoked out all of the partisanship and the hypocrisy.

This is an important bill, yet we hear everyone going off on tangents about everything other than a very simple bill. COVID-19, omicron or whatever form it is going to mutate into, kills people. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have died as a result of it. They were preventable deaths. We are talking about dealing with preventing death here. We are not talking about transfer payments and whatever else people want to do as a red herring. Let us just talk about our having the power to help to save lives. Let us talk about how we do it. I want to congratulate the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

When there is a pandemic, there are some very simple things to do. The first thing we have to do is find out what the vector is, what is causing it, and how it is spread. In this case, we thought originally it was spread by droplet infection. We now know it is spread by aerosol. How it is spread is important for us to understand. The second thing we need to find out is how we get vaccines against it and how, if we can, prevent people from getting it. Containing the spread is an important part of it.

The federal government has been giving out rapid tests since October 2020, for a year and five months. I am not being partisan about this. It bothers me that my Province of British Columbia was given seven million free tests by the Government of Canada and no one knows how the tests are being handed out. British Columbians keep writing to me saying they cannot get a test to save their life and do not know where to find them. At the same time, I have grandchildren in Ontario who can get rapid tests at school and bring them home.

Let us talk about saving lives here. Let us talk about dealing with a virus that does not really care what political party we belong to or what province we live in. It does not give a hoot about the Constitution. It does not care about legislation or anything. It is a virus and it knows how to do only one thing, and that is to spread and make people ill. The longer it stays with us, the more we are going to see it change, evolve and mutate into different forms. Right now, we all think of omicron, that it is easy to pick up. Omicron is actually very mild.

On the other hand, we need to talk about why we should have rapid tests and what the importance of rapid tests is in this. We have identified the vector. We have decided how it is spread. We have decided we are going to contain it. We have vaccines. We have treatments ready. The question then is what the rapid tests are going to do. We know the tests are not always very reliable, but the important thing that rapid tests do is the third part of public health protocol, and that is surveillance and tracking.

If we can find out where omicron is, or B.1 or whatever the new strain is, we are able to do not only a widespread, scattered approach, but we can look at that little town, little village, little space or little part of the city where there are more positive tests. Surveillance is a part of public health. It is a part of looking at a pandemic. They get surveillance and track it. The federal government put in a tracking mechanism, an app. Most provinces ignored it and the app became useless because nobody was tracking. Surveillance went by the board. Surveillance is key to knowing where to expend the resources and where they are going to find the virus spread so as to be able to curb it. It is scientific. It is a simple, basic method.

Therefore, it is important that we get rapid tests out to everyone as soon as possible. Yes, it helps people if they want to visit their grandma to know that they are okay and that they will not give her omicron. That is all very good, but the bottom line is it is important for surveillance and for tracking. Because we did not have an app that everybody used, there was a problem.

Again, I want to say that I am certainly not being partisan tonight. I am talking about Ontario having done one good thing. My daughter-in-law who lives in Ontario went out one day with her friends. They went for dinner. It was the friend's birthday, and there were three of them. When she got home, she got a message from the app in Ontario, the same federal app we are talking about, which told her she may have been in a room with and in touch with people with omicron.

The next day she went for her proper PCR test, not a rapid test. She went out. She isolated herself. She was able to take those kind of steps. This is what these protocols are for. This is why it does not matter how it is spread. It does not matter what is happening in the pandemic. These are some basic steps in epidemiology and in looking at pandemics, which began at the beginning of the 20th century when we first discovered public health, and we began to understand how to track things.

This is not a silly thing. There is nothing to study. This is real. The facts are there. This is the science that has been around since the early part of the 20th century, and we need to use it. We need to care about how we can prevent lives being lost. I am a physician. The idea that people could die from a preventable death bothers me to no end. It really does. I lose sleep at night over this. It really bothers me because it is in our power to do the right thing.

In my province of British Columbia, 92% of people have had a vaccination, so we can see that people do care. They want to do the right thing, yet we have people in the Conservative Party talking about how we should have no more vaccine mandates and no more whatever. Obviously, there is no understanding of what science is about, what public health is about, when it started, how it started, how it is tracked or how it works.

The most important thing we should be worried about is how to stop the spread and how to save lives. I support this bill. I would love for us to stop talking about everything else and just focus. Let us get this thing passed. Let us get the rapid tests going.

Hundreds of thousands are going to be done. Yes, it is money spent, but that money is important, because saving lives has got to be the number one priority for any government, anywhere, anyhow. Any party that wants to be in government has got to think about that.

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, February 8th, 2022]

Madam Chair, I will start by saying that we actually opened up safe injection sites, safe consumption sites, across this country, which were blocked and stopped for 10 years by the Conservative government. That is the first thing we did.

Second, we made naloxone available, which can immediately save someone who is dying of an overdose and prevent them from dying. We have been giving access to drugs to many provinces that have been able to accept it. The problem is that it is not reaching everyone. I talk all the time with colleagues of mine who are also physicians. They are telling me that the thing to do is to use what has been successful for 25 years in Europe, in Switzerland and Scandinavia, which is diacetylmorphine. It is an easy drug.

I have told my colleagues in government, because we recently found out this is something that is easily done, to provide a substance use and addiction funding program to doctors, nurse practitioners and others to give this drug, in its inhalable form and its intravenous form, to people who need it. The SUAP grant funding will make it happen because right now in the province of British Columbia, it is not being allowed by the provincial government.

My friends may say—

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, February 8th, 2022]

Madam Chair, decriminalization does have something to do with it. It removes the stigma. We are already moving forward with that as a federal government. We have asked attorneys general, federal and in every province, not to give criminal records to people who are using certain amounts. The City of Vancouver is willing to work on this.

I am in support of it, but the thing that saves lives, which is what I am focusing on tonight, is safe supply. When we look at the evidence, yes, Portugal has had some success, but the greatest successes are occurring in Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries where they are using safe supply. We need to recognize how people use it. It is not being used intravenously anymore. It is being inhaled. We see all kinds of people using it. We need to move forward to save lives.

Decriminalizing is important. It is one of the many tools that we have, but everyone is focusing on that and nobody is really talking about access to safe supply. The federal government has been giving access to safe supply and funding safe supply in every province that has asked for it. The thing we are talking about is how to make this inhalable drug available to 70% of users and how to ensure that we are using a tried and true for the past 25 years drug that has been shown not only to save lives but to get people into rehabilitation—

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, February 8th, 2022]

Madam Chair, I am so excited to participate in this debate. I think my colleague just said it all. We talk about a crisis. A crisis sounds like something existential. This is real. In my province of British Columbia, 6.5 people a day are dying from preventable deaths. This is a mental health issue. This is a mental health problem, and there is a way to deal with it. We can talk about decriminalization, and we can talk about a whole lot of other things. The only thing that would stop people dying from a toxic, illicit supply of illegal drugs is a safe supply of drugs. That is it. That is simple.

Since 2015, we have heard from my colleague that our government has done a great number of things. We have expanded safe consumption sites, and we have been able to allow everyone to have naloxone readily available to them, for if they have an overdose. However, we have also learned some other things.

Things have changed since this began. Now, 70% of street users inhale opioids. They are not using them intravenously any more. They are inhaling them. We need to deal with that. We are finding out that about 35% of people who are dying from an overdose are dying in private homes. About 50% are dying in social housing, in hotels and everywhere else. Only a small percentage of people are dying on the street. This mythical figure we have of some homeless person lying in the gutter using opioids is not true. Clear evidence tells us opioids are being used by professionals, families, people with children and middle-class persons. It is killing them. We need to stop it.

I think our government has done a great deal. We have brought in naloxone, as I said. We have been able to increase the number of safe consumption sites, and we have been helping with field operations to deliver harm reduction in cities across the country. We have been doing all of this, but the number of people dying each day is increasing.

I wanted to point out that, no matter what we have to say about safe consumption sites, in the most recent report from British Columbia there were no overdose deaths in safe consumption sites. Of these deaths, 28% were in hotels and single-room occupancy housing and social housing, and 55% were in private homes. Let us get this picture right.

The majority of people who are dying from overdoses are men under the age of 59. These are people in the prime of their lives: productive Canadians whose lives have been lost. We have it in our power to prevent this, and what we need to do is go with a safe supply.

We need to look at how we provide the right kind of safe supply, though. Right now, in Vancouver and in other places across the country, you can get intravenous drugs given to you in small clinics that do not reach everybody.

However, if people are inhaling the drugs, we need to be able to look at using a drug that has been used for 25 years in Europe. It is called diacetylmorphine, or DAM. DAM has been used with success. People who are taking it are beginning to live productive lives. They are going to work, they are having families and they are doing normal things because they do not have to worry about dying. I think the most important question to ask is this: How do we get diacetylmorphine into the hands of the people in Canada who need it?

One of the big things we found out is that the provinces are unwilling to do this. They are afraid. The political risk for them is too high, so we talk about decriminalization as if it is a magic bullet. It has nothing to do with anything. What I would like to suggest is that the federal government has it in its power to use the substance use and addictions program to deliver small amounts of money to pilot projects, driven by clinical practitioners in their practices, by physicians and nurse practitioners through telehealth, and by other ways of getting inhalable diacetylmorphine into the hands of people.

It is simple. It is an easy thing to do, it is clinically proven and it is evidence-based. The outcomes are great in Europe, where they call it heroin-assisted treatment.

Let us stop having ideology about this and stop moralizing about this. Let us save lives, people. We have it in our power to do so.

If we allow for SUAP to be given to the clinicians and nurse practitioners who want to use it through telehealth and other ways of getting this out to real people, then we can save those lives.

[Diversity and Inclusion, February 1st, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, Black History Month is a time to reflect on the many contributions the Black community has made throughout history to shape Canada into the nation we are today. We must empower Black voices and Black experiences to face the challenges that prevent them from contributing fully to a diverse, prosperous and inclusive Canada. This means taking action against systemic discrimination and anti-Black racism.

Could the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth update the House on the actions our government has taken to empower the Black community?

[Situation in Ukraine, January 31st, 2022]

Madam Chair, Canada is at the table with NATO playing the role that it can and that it is asked to play around that table. Canada is at the table with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is made up of 57 nation-states. Canada is well respected and trusted at that table. These are the people who are talking about the steps to deal with Russia. These are the people who live close to Russia, and they know what to do. Canada is also a close friend and ally of the United States. We are at the table. We have been at the table ever since we have been dealing with OSCE agreements that included Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

We are playing the role that we can play. When one is on a team, one is asked to play a certain role, and we are doing that. At the moment, this is a role that we feel, and that everyone has felt, is a good role for us to play. We are prepared, I am sure, to move forward if we are asked to play other roles, but Canada is definitely at the table, and I know because I am very involved in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

[Situation in Ukraine, January 31st, 2022]

Madam Chair, I am talking about the word “trust” here. We trusted a government that told us it would be going into Czechoslovakia and it would not do anything else, and then it moved to take over Europe.

I do not know the bottom line of Putin's agenda, but I do know that he showed himself not to be trustworthy when he went into Crimea, when he armed his warships in the Baltic Sea, and when he threatened by his very presence a lot of the Baltic states and the Arctic Ocean. I think we need to remember that we have to be guarded. We should not be naive enough to believe whatever we are hearing from somebody who has shown that he is not to be trusted, and we need to be prepared. We need to start softly, but as with Georgia we also need to be prepared. I am not going to say we need to be prepared for war, but we need to be prepared to show our strength to come together as members of NATO or the OSCE.

[Situation in Ukraine, January 31st, 2022]

Madam Chair, I want to speak to Canadians out there and constituents, because I have noted that many of them have been asking why Canada is worrying about this country. It is so far away up there in Eastern Europe, why are we bothered?

We are bothered because this is not just about us. It is not just about Ukraine. It is not just about NATO. It is not just about Europe. It is about the fact that one has to have a rules-based order to keep global security moving. One has to have relationships with countries based on trust.

What is shown is that in 1991, when Ukraine became a sovereign nation and became independent, it still carried the third-largest arms supply in the world. An agreement was made in 1994 at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe called the Budapest agreement. Everyone wanted nuclear disarmament and there was an agreement between the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan that said that if Ukraine got rid of all of its nuclear storage, they would all agree that in exchange Ukraine, as a sovereign nation, would be protected and not have any aggression levelled against it. Its territorial integrity and its sovereignty would be accepted and realized.

Russia broke that. It broke that rule when it went into Crimea in 2014. It broke that rule again when it was amassing troops on the borders of Ukraine and along the Baltic states. It broke that rule, as the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood said, now that it is looking at arming the Baltic with warships.

Russia is giving us a message and the whole issue is about trust. We cannot trust its words, trust its agreements or trust its assurances. Global security is at risk when there is absolutely no trust, so we all need to be concerned about it. We have talked a lot about wanting peaceful solutions. We have talked a lot about not moving into war, but the way to prevent war is to have trust. The way to prevent war is to have a rules-based world order. The way to prevent war is to make sure that we can believe in each other and trust each other's word. Russia has proven itself not to be capable of that, and not only in 2014, when it moved into Crimea. We know that it has moved into Transnistria. We know that the Baltic states are all very concerned.

I think this is something we need to think about. I do not know if members remember this in history, but I recall a time when a certain government said it would only move in to take over Czechoslovakia. We believed it and agreed. We thought it was all fine and wonderful. Then we saw it move to take over all of Europe, and then came the Second World War. We are on the brink of a global war. We need to think about that.

Obviously, we need to negotiate. Obviously, we need to try to find a peaceful resolution to conflict, but we also need to have an iron fist in a velvet glove. As we talk about the kinds of things we need to do with respect to negotiating, we need to have solidarity in our backpack, pardon my mixed metaphors, and things such as Magnitsky sanctions. We need to understand that money is being hidden in our countries by oligarchs and Putin himself. That money came from corruption. It came from the human rights denials of many people around the world. This is a government that we need to stop where it hurts, in the pocketbook and in the personal pocketbook. If that does not work, we need to think about the fact that we, as members of the OSCE and NATO, have to be prepared to take whatever steps we need.

Churchill said, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war”, but sometimes, as he showed us, we have to do what is necessary to protect global security.

[Situation in Ukraine, January 31st, 2022]

Madam Chair, can you hear me now?

[Situation in Ukraine, January 31st, 2022]

Madam Chair, I have been listening with a great deal of interest to all of the speakers and I think I want to speak to constituents out there. We all understand the issue. We know the regional—