Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister, aided and abetted by the NDP, has spent nine years implementing his radical vision of Canada. He would like everyone to believe that this agenda is normal.
There is record food bank usage, out-of-control gas prices and a housing market that has priced young Canadians out of the dream of home ownership. The government is censoring the Internet by controlling what people can see or say online. There is a 39% increase in violent crime; catch-and-release bail that sees offenders arrested in the morning, out by noon, and then rearrested later that very same day; and the legalization of meth, cocaine, heroin and opioids in British Columbia. Parents are worried that their children could step on used needles in a playground. None of this is normal. These are the outcomes of the radical policies brought to us by the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister. His legacy is one of crime, chaos, drugs and disorder. The results of his hard-drug legalization experiment and taxpayer-funded narcotics policy have been tragic but entirely predictable.
Since 2015, over 42,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses. Opioid overdose deaths have increased 186% across Canada under the Prime Minister's watch. A record 2,500 British Columbians died from drug overdoses last year. That is up 380% in nine years. That is six entirely preventable deaths, every day, of friends and colleagues, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Each of them had a story, and every one of these deaths is a tragedy. These are human beings.
Drug overdose is now the number one cause of death in B.C., with more fatalities than crime, accidents and disease combined. It is also the number one cause of death among kids aged 10 to 17. I have 11-year-old twin grandsons. This is personal, and this is not normal.
The story of 14-year-old Kamilah Sword of Port Coquitlam is heartbreaking. Kamilah tragically overdosed in her bedroom in August 2022. According to her father, the coroner found three drugs in her system: MDMA, cocaine and hydromorphone. Hydromorphone is an opiate prescribed under B.C.'s so-called safe supply program.
Kamilah's friends reported that they have witnessed children as young as 11 years of age using hydromorphone. This is completely unacceptable. The street price of hydromorphone has fallen close to 90%, from $20 to two dollars per pill. Basically, any kid can buy them.
How many more children have to die before the government reverses course? Our common-sense, Conservative motion before the House today calls on the Prime Minister to end this unsafe supply program and redirect this money into treatment and recovery programs for those addicted to drugs. This is common sense. This is compassion. The radical approach of the NDP-Liberal government is making the addiction crisis worse and does not put those struggling with addiction on a path to recovery. That should always be the goal. The government's approach only pumps more hard drugs onto our streets, killing our citizens, destroying our families and tearing our communities apart.
The over supply of these free drugs gets in the hands of organized crime, which then sells them to children. If one gets them for free, any return is a profit.
Addictions workers confirm that most users of so-called safe supply are diverting these drugs and reselling them across the country. This is government-funded drug trafficking.
How is this for insanity? In Prince George, the police ran a 10-day surveillance operation on a woman who stood outside a downtown IDA Pharmacy every morning trading her so-called safe supply drugs for harder drugs. Police reported dozens of hand-to-hand transactions. The pharmacy manager told the RCMP that patients are given up to 28 hydromorphone pills per day, equating to approximately $480 a day if resold. He also reported that many patients are accosted by people outside the pharmacy wanting to purchase the safe supply drugs. The insanity is the brainchild of big pharma.
The term “safe supply” is big pharma's sales jargon, its propaganda, meant to secure government contracts and pad the industry's burgeoning pockets. Let us be clear: Safe supply is a lie. There is nothing safe about fentanyl. The radical NDP-Liberal government bought the big lie, and now Canadians are paying the price in dollars and in deaths.
Canadians have the right to know how much they are paying to fuel the crisis. The government refuses to release its contracts with big pharma, covering up the huge cost of this reckless experiment. The radical government does not get it. Its policies are killing Canadians, and it clearly does not care. Despite the death, crime and carnage, the Prime Minister has not ruled out replicating B.C.'s failed drug experiment in other jurisdictions across the country.
Our motion calls on the Prime Minister to proactively reject the City of Toronto’s request to legalize deadly hard drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin and meth. The motion further calls on him to deny any future requests from provinces, territories and municipalities seeking federal approval to legalize hard drugs in their jurisdiction. We do not need to export the drug chaos in B.C. to other jurisdictions.
The Prime Minister should never have granted a reckless exemption to B.C. to allow open, “in your face” hard drug use in public places. Parks, beaches, transit, sports fields, coffee shops and playgrounds in B.C. have become drug-infested nightmares. A two-year-old girl was hospitalized after putting a discarded needle in her mouth at a park. Even our hospitals, once a beacon of safety, are now lawless spaces where health care workers and patients are put at risk.
The B.C. Nurses' Union is sounding the alarm for its members. Patients and staff have been exposed to harmful hard drugs. Meth was even being smoked in a unit just hours after the birth of a newborn baby. This breaks my heart. It should break everyone's hearts. A nurse in Campbell River said she had been exposed to smoke from hard drugs six times. How in God’s name is the government allowing this to happen? I cannot believe I have to say this, but hospitals should be sanctuaries of healing and care, not places of lawlessness and chaos.
After nine years, the extremist NDP-Liberal government is not worth the drugs, disorder and death. Only a common-sense Conservative government will end unsupervised and unprescribed use of hard drugs in hospitals. We will end taxpayer-funded narcotics that are killing our children and poisoning our communities. We will focus on treating Canadians struggling with addiction, providing a path to recovery so we can bring our loved ones home drug-free.
Hope must be restored. Unlike the radical NDP-Liberal government, we will not give up on people. It is compassion and common sense. The extreme, deadly drug experiment must end and never be repeated.
